That American youth today, as the youth of all lands and ages, regards personal comeliness with marked approval is a truism continually demonstrated by the answers to the many questionnaires on the subject "The girl I would like to marry" or "The man I want as husband." Princeton freshmen, responding to formal questions of this kind, emphasize good looks as "the first essential quality of the ideal girl." Wisconsin University freshmen are satisfied with a girl who is "just nice to look at." Less pronounced is the attitude expressed in the answers to a questionnaire submitted to 5,000 young people, members of the Walther League, the young people's organization of the Lutheran Synodical Conference. Of the ballots returned by the young women, 35 per cent made prominent reference to physical attractions, stating that the ideal husband must be "handsome," "good-looking," "attractive." Among the male voters the requirement of comeliness was stressed even more strongly, 51 per cent of the ballots insisting upon physical attractiveness.
These expressions are generally evidence of commendable judgment, and they are endorsed by the Scriptures, in which human beauty is recognized as a notable blessing. The prominence which the Bible accords to the attractive women who figure on its pages is sometimes overlooked. But a closer survey presents Sarah as of such extraordinary beauty that even at seventy years (approximately middle age in that era) she was regarded by the Egyptians as "very fair" (Gen. 12:14); Rebecca, "very fair to look upon" (Gen. 26:7); Rachel, "beautiful and well favored" (Gen. 29:17); Job's daughters, "the fairest of all the women in the land" (Job 42:15); Esther, the maid "fair and beautiful" (Esther 2:7); and other godly young women distinguished for their personal attractiveness. With this Scriptural emphasis there can be room for no other estimate of beauty than this, that it is a preeminent gift of God, which should be cherished.
Because of this Scriptural premise American girls are not to be censured for the desire to preserve and develop their loveliness. The position of the Church has often been libeled and caricatured by iconoclastic writers, who have pictured clergymen as gaunt, snooping misanthropes, stigmatizing everything beautiful as sin and hurling anathemas at the girl who tries to look her best. Attempts to justify this slander may be based on the utterances of some ascetic preacher who, pushing his Bible aside, looks at the youth of the Church with smoked glasses and denounces every approach to beauty. The Christian Church has never shared this misshapen protest against loveliness. How could it when an entire book of the Bible, the Song of Songs, which pictures the spiritual unity between Christ and His believers under the symbolism of a marriage, calls the bride, the Church, the "fairest among women"?
Neither must a girl be stupid because she is attractive. Armand T. Nickels, who for four years directed the school for vanity at Atlantic City, called America's Beauty Pageant, seems to have become embittered by his experience. He complains: "Most of the pretty girls I have met have heads as empty as their faces are beautiful." While beauty-contest entrants almost automatically classify themselves in the category of the mentally mediocre, it has been shown in a study of 1,030 men and women of British genius that in more than 50 per cent of their biographies their noteworthy physical beauty is stressed. In our own country a review of our acquaintances among the leaders in the several fields of social, educational, or commercial activity will call to mind a group of men and women whose appearance matches their distinction.
Nor is a girl gifted with rare attraction necessarily of moronic mind. It is true that to a very marked degree certain young women, intimately and lavishly publicized, have flaunted their beauty before the public gaze as they have helped to swell the records of marital scandal. But to counterbalance this notoriety sometimes associated with performers on the stage and screen, we have a long list of attractive women who have contributed in many ways to the improvement of the nation.
Yet beauty in itself, detached from all ideals of morality and intelligence, is never exalted in the divine Word. The Bible recognizes no form of that pagan cult of the body which makes young women vestals at the shrine of pulchritude. On the contrary, the fatal attachments of beauty without a corresponding inner attraction are plainly outlined in some of the tragedies of Scripture. One thinks almost instinctively either of Bathsheba, the woman who "was very beautiful to look upon" (2 Sam. 11:2), or of Tamar, a woman of a fair countenance (2 Sam. 13:1). As a background to these catastrophes we recall that antediluvian cult of the body practiced when the sons of God, the descendants of' Seth, took as wives the fair daughters of men, whose beauty was their sole distinction (Gen. 6:2).
Because there must be beauty plus, Solomon warns: "As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion" (Prov. 11:22); and since beauty of the soul is far more essential than outward adornment, the summary of every-' day wisdom which we call the Book of Proverbs closes its 900 verses with this impressive statement: "Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her own works praise her in the gates" (Prov. 31:30, 31).
While love cannot be blind to physical charm, much less can it be indifferent to inner attractiveness. The girl who permits her choice to be swayed by a suitor whose only assets are stature and, appearance, and the young man who is swept off his feet by a pretty face and attractive clothing, without pausing to inquire for that quality which is not skin-deep, but soul-deep, are to be pitied before they are censured.
A comely quality is found in every life transformed through the beauty of holiness. The Church's youth is well called the dew of the morning (Ps. 110:3); for there is an inimitable sparkle in the radiance of a Christ-centered young man or young woman, in comparison with which the mere beauty of the flesh seems remotely incidental and woefully inadequate. He chooses well who finds a soul resplendent with faith's happiness, even though the measurements of the De Milo perfections be missing and the features of ravishing beauty be sought in vain.
Add to this the well-mannered, soft-spoken, considerate, and intelligent charm in a young woman regardless of her pulchritude rating, and you have a complete compensation for any handicap in appearance. Even academic wisdom quite void of any spiritual impulse agrees. Listing the requirements of attractiveness-in a talk at an Evanston, Illinois, school for charm, the dean of women of Northwestern University made no mention of physical beauty. Commenting en this omission, the leaders in this charm course declared: "If a girl has all these qualities, she will not be handicapped by the lack of a pretty face. Her friends will not notice her face. A pretty girl who lacks charm, on the other hand, might as well be ugly, for all the good it will do her."
Men who suffer from unusual physical handicaps likewise need not despair of happiness and marriage. Joseph Fels, internationally known soap-manufacturer, who "rose from poverty to great wealth without robbing anybody," was of small stature. An acquaintance writes: "He was no larger than a twelve-year-old boy. But in mind and heart he was one of the greatest and noblest men of his generation. He was so lovable that it is hard to write about him without being carried away in saying too much." His subnormal proportions did not embitter his life. When he was twenty, he fell in love with a young woman who was likewise unusually small; and their marriage was exceedingly happy.
Within the last years commercialized interests have come to the fore by offering charm as though it were a market commodity purchasable at reduced prices. Ah Eastern concern specializing in correspondence courses on attractive personality sells its charm book at exactly half price, including a personal autograph of the author if desired. With particular appeal to young women the impression is created that for two dollars and fifty cents you can learn how to "impress other people favorably at all times." The author, characterized as "the most-sought-after counselor of women in the world," an adviser to whom "many have paid heavy fees," for whom "society women await their turn to receive her counsel," promises that her cut-price volume will "inspire you to grace and graciousness"; that "you will have an allure which time will only deepen and a personal happiness beyond the ordinary understanding." People will behold the "graciousness of your words" and "the glowing light" of "your countenance," and "all who see you pass will say, 'What is the magic of this woman? I cannot forget her. She is a mystery to me. I must fathom her secret.'"
Rather amazing is this challenge and promise: "Read it at night before you go to sleep and see what it does to you." Some of us would be afraid of nightmare, what with all the emphasis upon the social blunders that might be committed in "the grand tier at the opera on a magnificent yacht in a box at the races."
The proportions which the "allure" business has assumed is startling. An investigator in 1937 described one New York charm center with scores of workers, who sent out 70,000 pieces of mail every day. Another concern with a formula claiming that charm is 50 per cent appearance, 40 per cent personality, and 10 per cent tact numbers approximately 10,000 charm pupils, who pay $30 for a ten weeks' course, with two mimeographed lessons each week. A third "loveliness" institute, in New York City, seems definitely directed toward helping its clients find handsome and wealthy husbands.
We are all normally attracted by those who, avoiding mannerisms, show acquaintance with the requirements of etiquette. It is equally indisputable that our young ladies should acquire correct posture and grace in movements. Yet the personalities that impress us and whose recollections linger in our minds have attracted our attention and interest by something more than this. Again we concede that conversational ability, tact in speaking and listening, choice diction, as well as the talent of writing correct letters with the impress of individuality and interest are signs of good training. Conversational leaders and correspondence experts, however, may often be interesting without being charming. In short, the self-expression that attracts people cannot be secured for two dollars and a half, or for two million and a half, for that matter. Charm, first of all, is a matter of good breeding, good thinking, a common-sense naturalness, an unselfish interest in one's fellow-men, and a genuine desire to develop one's talents and endowments. No better basis for true and lasting charm exists than the instruction of the apostle: "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things. Those things which ye have both learned and received and heard and seen in me do; and the God of peace shall be with you" (Phil. 4:8,9).
Young women who are not endowed with glamorous beauty and who bemoan their plain features as an unhappy discrimination should find compensation in acquiring a cheerful, wholesome, intelligent poise and bearing. Beauty without intelligence may bask in the spotlight of social popularity where callow youth momentarily pays its dazed tribute; but in the more serious contemplation of marriage the plain young woman of preeminent spiritual and intellectual attainments enjoys a definite preference by every young man who can distinguish between glitter and gold.
Clothing is an important factor in every girl's quest of charm. The present day styles have generally reached a height of saneness only rarely attained in the past generations. By way of contrast and for a refreshing appreciation of dress normalcy it may be well to read this description of apparel displayed by Russian ladies in the days of Peter the Great:
They wore a sort of dress of which the sleeves were ten to twelve yards long. These sleeves were made very full and were drawn up upon the arm in a sort of puff, it being the fashion to have as great a length of sleeve as could possibly be crowded on between the shoulder and the wrist. The customary salutation between ladies and gentlemen in society, when this dress was in fashion, was performed through the intervention of the sleeves. On the approach of the gentleman, the lady, by a sudden and dexterous motion of her arm, would throw off the end of her sleeve to him. The sleeve, being so very long, could be thrown in this way half across the room. The gentleman would take the sleeve, which represented, we are to suppose, the hand of the lady, and after kissing and saluting it in a most respectful manner, he would resign it, and the lady would draw it back again on her arm."
In a general way, too, the price of clothing and millinery has dropped to a level which is much more proportionate with income than during past centuries. How meager the wardrobe even of princes and presidents in comparison with the royal raiment of Louis XIV, who in his public-audience days at Versailles stood on a platform of silver, resplendent in a costume that cost twelve million dollars! His wedding garment of velvet, lavishly embroidered with gold and studded with jewels, was much more modest, since its cost was in excess of only one million dollars. Compare with these expenditures the Parisian dress, costing only several hundred dollars, which Wallis Warfield wore when she was married to the Duke of Windsor. A few weeks after the wedding, copies and variations of the duchess's wedding dress sold in New York for around sixteen dollars and later for six dollars.
In spite of the many commendable features in woman's apparel, violations of a wise, healthy attitude of modesty in dress periodically present themselves. In a recent issue of a New York newspaper a seductive advertisement publicizes "the Mephisto Mode" for women, calculatingly exhibited as a "new highly polished evening sophistication." Its flaunting colors are appropriately "inferno red with pitch black"; the fur decorations what else could they be but monkey! This combination of Mephisto with monkey has its point. But for our present purposes we drop the simian element to discuss the satanic. Has it actually come to this, that American women are ready to revel in a style that commemorates a prince of hell?
Other clothing designers, not to be outdone, have added competitive names. We read another advertisement from one of the better New York stores which presents a new mode called "Black Panther" and is described in this way, "as slinky and alluring as its namesake." Another exclusive shop features "Siren Negligee," with the promise that "it gives you ... glamour for moments when you frankly want to be as pampered as a movie star." A New York department store features "Furore in Paris, a provocative dinner costume," which is described in this way: "Your shoulders covered the rest of you a series of wicked little tricks of low decolletage, slashed hem, curving hips a la Zaza that's the way Paris is dressing now for dining out. Deliberately provocative. Ultrasophisticated."
Now the perfume industry has taken over the idea. The better stores in New York are selling "French Cancan," with this description: "Wicked inspiration from the famous girls at Bal Tabarin in Paris." Ravishing lip-sticks are described as producing a "wickedly beautiful" effect. Perhaps this accounts for the fact that another of the stores advertises a "blush cream," guaranteeing amazing instant action in bringing "color to the cheeks."
That there is a direct connection between the forces of evil and the type of clothing that some young women display is a truth long acknowledged by the Church and now recognized particularly in the wave of sex crimes by psychologists and scientific investigators themselves. A police woman from the nation's capital, discussing the cause of delinquency and offense on the part of our young people, indicts certain types of young women "because they parade their sex by scanty costumes." An Oklahoma prosecutor reviewing these terrifying crimes, declares, "Every mother should consider seriously the kind of clothes her daughter wears." A Michigan attorney finds the cause for serious criminal charge in the lure of wearing apparel. The superintendent of the Cook County Psychopathic Hospital, who is also associate professor of mental diseases at Loyola University, warns, "There is a group of moral weaklings on whom styles exercise a degrading effect. They are neither noticeably intelligent nor feeble-minded."
Whatever effects the current and extreme decolletage may have on others, it can hardly be disputed that the daring, revealing type of clothing tends in itself to destroy the wearer's appreciation of modesty. A closer connection between apparel and personal morality doubtless exists in more cases than has been hitherto conceded.
Another unfortunate consequence of this bold and extreme display may be found in the tragedy that makes inordinate demands on time and money. Some girls, utterly impervious to the better things in life, quite unconcerned about the spiritual side of their narrow, stunted lives, expend practically all their salary surplus in replenishing their wardrobe and keeping up with the latest and most rigorous dictates of fashion. It is often just a species of the pagan cult of the body, this worship of style and the simultaneous refusal to develop the mind, to grow in intellectual grace, to fortify the spiritual life. And what a bad bargain this concentration on clothes proves to be when it leaves the wearer with only a little more animation than that of a window dummy!
This is not a tirade against attractive, stylish clothing. Even in the Scriptures, Isaiah calls on Jerusalem to "put on beautiful garments"; and in the Forty-fifth Psalm the Messiah and His bride, the Church, are pictured in striking vesture of varied color, embroidered in the gold of Ophir, and self-evidently the Holy Spirit would not have employed any sinful conception as a symbol of inner and spiritual beauty. Every normal Christian young woman wants to look her best and dislikes the idea of wearing the cast-off styles of yesteryear. The questions of apparel rightly receive some of her attention. No rational person shares the ideals of Hetty Green, who, when she was a young woman, hoarded the money given her for buying presentable clothes. Even on her honeymoon abroad she continued to wear old, faded garments. Bellow Falls, Connecticut, the home of the Greens, waited eagerly to see the luxury and plenty which the wealthy bride, they hoped, would bring to the community. Instead, she arrived in disreputable attire, and worse, her face and her hands were filthy. In her penuriousness she fashioned underclothing of newspapers to save expense, and for the same reason she had only the bottoms of her petticoats laundered. At her death her fortune was estimated at between $75,000,000 and $100,000,000.
Only one basic restriction is placed on Christian women, young and old, according to which, in the words of Saint Paul to Timothy, they are to "adorn themselves with modest apparel." This appeal of the apostle is, of course, the final and decisive voice for every follower of Christ in all questions of dress. Whether it is the matter of bathing suits, athletic costumes, summer-apparel, or evening dress, this one inexorable rule remains: Let Christian women "adorn themselves in modest apparel." No matter what the dictates of Christless fashion may be, no matter how the rest of the crowd at the office, at school, on the beach, on the tennis-court, or on a hike may dress and act, the divine standard for every Christian girl in all her activities is always "modest apparel."
All young people who would enter marriage should have the assurance that they are free of grave physical defects which would prevent them from bringing healthy children into the world. It is not only our sacred duty to preserve and promote our personal physical well-being; when the health of others is involved, as in marriage, we have the added responsibility of bestowing extraordinary thought and care upon the physical fitness of the prospective husband or wife.
However, health is at best only a matter of degree. An Eastern life-insurance company reports that of 2,000,000 applicants not one furnished a perfect health record. While young people should endeavor to bring their future life-mates a clean bill of physical fitness, the extremes of radical physical culture must be avoided. Many a girl suffering from some impediment, perhaps lameness, or defective hearing, weak eyes, or similar handicaps, may bring more happiness into a home than a perfect-posture prizewinner, a tennis champion, or an Amazon who thrives on an uncooked-food and raw-meat diet. Athletes, it is frequently alleged, make particularly good husbands, not only because they are accustomed to discipline and have been trained in the doctrine of team play, but also because of their physical fitness. Yet the list of athletes who have been matrimonial failures is disproportionate.
The extreme demands for physical perfection, as formulated by the alarmist advocates of eugenics, often exceed the limits of the rational and the Christian. As a formal science, eugenics (literally good breeding) was introduced in the nineteenth century largely by the work of Sir Francis Gallon. Through the establishment of fellowships and the endowment of eugenic laboratories in London as well as through the support of related studies in genetics and heredity this research into the principles of heritable and transmittable characteristics has enjoyed wide-spread and scientific attention; a sizable literature has sprung up; and eugenics has been popularized as few branches of biological science. Because of the growing agitation for sterilization in the Western States of our country and as a consequence of the Nazi insistence upon a pure Nordic stock eugenics have been popularized for the masses as never before.
In a general way, eugenics endeavors to "elevate" men to the stage of pure-blooded thoroughbreds. Citing the favorite example of the race-horse and the efforts of horse-breeders to produce the best possible strain of prize-winners, eugenics enthusiasts draw the conclusion that a similar ennobling of the human strain is possible and that legislation should be framed to protect the process by which better human beings are to be bred. These efforts of ecumenists have customarily been grouped under two heads: 1) negative eugenics, the theory that those who are suffering from incurable and communicable mental or physical diseases (or from hereditary predisposition to such diseases) should be prevented from marrying; 2) positive eugenics, the complementary effort to surround the physically and mentally superior members of the human race with the best inducements to propagate the best possible children and, in general, to adopt all methods of improving the human family so that the superman and, in the aggregate, the super race may ultimately populate the earth.
The Church is not unsympathetic to a broad interpretation of the eugenic desire to improve the human race. It does not hide its head in the sands of theological abstractions while research in heredity presents its theories of genes and chromosomes. It has never protested against State legislation like that in Minnesota, Michigan, Kansas, and Oregon, where epileptics, insane or feeble-minded persons are generally prohibited from marrying, or that in Michigan, Illinois, and other States, where marriage is forbidden to any one who suffers from an uncured social disease. In a broad way the Church has consistently practiced negative eugenics by advising that victims of advanced tuberculosis, social diseases, and similar maladies should not marry. If the simple application of common sense in rejecting as a marriage partner any one contaminated with a loathsome and recurrent disease is eugenics; if the careful premarital investigation of physical characteristics is an integral part of eugenics, then every Christian should be a eugenicist.
In this faddist age, however, eugenics should be spelled with an initial capital because it has come to denote a peculiarly technical cult and a program of extremist principles that penetrates into almost every fiber of the modern social fabric. Some of the claims in the eugenic platform are scientifically, morally, and socially reprehensible.
First of all, the eugenic policy suffers from the deficiency of operating on uncertainties. Excepting a group of basic laws of heredity, the science of genetics has little firm ground under its feet at this time. Encyclopedia Britannica summarizes: "It can hardly be said that the science has advanced beyond the stage of disseminating a knowledge of the laws of heredity so far as they are surely known." If we ask how far these laws of heredity are known and with what certainty a theory of the transmission of traits may be built up, Prof. H. S. Jennings, geneticist of Johns Hopkins University, gives these basic facts: "Every pair of human parents contains thousands of pairs of the chemical packets (genes) on which development depends. From these a set is drawn almost at random (subject to the condition that one packet is taken from each pair possessed by each parent); this constitutes the heritage of the child. Any pair of parents may thus produce not merely thousands, but millions of different combinations, each yielding a child of different characteristics. There is no way of controlling the combinations that shall enter into a child of given parents; there is no prospect that there ever will be.
"It is therefore impossible to predict what kind of offspring will be produced by a given pair of parents, save in a few respects, in cases where the constitution of both packets of a particular pair are known for each parent. If both parents have the corresponding pairs defective in the same manner, lacking, for example, something required for producing a normal mind, then their children will be all defective like the parents; feeble-minded parents will produce feeble-minded children. But if, as may well be the case, the feeble mind is due to defects in different packets in the two parents, then all experimental breeding shows that the two parental stocks may supplement one another, so that the defect will not appear in the offspring. The characteristics that are predictable are extremely few."
Outside the laboratory and in the inexorable evidence of life we meet many contradictions to the claims of eugenics. Chisel murderers are millionaires' well-nourished sons; honor students commit suicide; penitentiaries are overcrowded with specimens of well-nigh perfect physique; eugenically mated parents are sometimes sterile, or their offspring may be sickly incubator babies.
True, strong family traits are often noted for several generations. Johann Sebastian Bach represents a long line of noted musicians. For two hundred years before his day Bachs had played and sung with distinction, and so numerous and renowned was this lineage that long after the family had ceased to live in Erfurt musicians in that city were called "Bachs." In the Bach genealogical line, the most musical family known to history, thirty-seven members of six generations exhibited conspicuous musical talent and attained prominence.
The Curies are outstanding as Nobel Prize winners; Pierre and Marie together received the coveted award for physics in 1903, and Marie alone for chemistry in 1911. In 1935 the daughter of the Curies and her husband were awarded the same prize for their work in radioactivity. Similarly Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin, miscalled the "father of evolution," and of Francis Gallon, whom a previous page describes as the pioneer eugenicist, as well as Charles Darwin's sons, Francis and George, and the grandson, Charles, have been noted for outstanding contributions to science. William Herschel, God-fearing astronomer, had a similarly distinguished son and grandson who continued the family's study of the skies.
Criminal traits correspondingly have been notorious in certain families. We note the Kallikaks, 436 descendants from the degenerate son of a feeble-minded mother, among whom were many thieves, robbers, criminals, and prostitutes. Similarly Abraham Markus left 371 descendants, many of whom helped to fill prisons. The Swedish farmer Pehr Pehrson numbered 2,230 descendants, and of these 1,530 were described as degenerates, petty thieves, drunkards, feeble-minded, epileptics.
On the other hand, heredity plays some queer pranks. Biographers commemorating the centennial of Mark Twain's birth declared that, "though John Clemens was the father of the world's greatest humorist, he was never known to laugh and seldom smiled.
The progeny of Jonathan Edwards and Sarah Pierrepont presents a list of distinguished college presidents, teachers, authors, physicians, judges, attorneys, statesmen, ministers, and others of high place in professional or public life. It is also true that this family tree shows a large company of Edwardses who sank unnoticed beneath mediocrity. It is evidence of eugenicist bias that usually the overworked references to this distinguished American family neglect to record that Edwards's own grandmother was divorced for immorality, that his great-aunt murdered her own son, and that one of his great-uncles brutally killed a sister.
Again, the Jukes family, the eugenic Exhibit A, did bring a host of morons into the world; but Dr. J. H. Landman, in his Human Sterilization, reminds us that the Jukeses who left the poverty-cursed regions in the Adirondacks and established themselves in fertile sections became respected members of their communities.
Dr. Landman insists that greatness does not necessarily produce greatness, and as proof he calls attention to a study made by Dr. Pearl of Johns Hopkins. Investigating the biographies of the world's eminent men and women, the Baltimore scientist finds, for example, that of 63 distinguished philosophers the parents of 15 were unknown; that of the parents of the remaining 48 only 2 fathers and 1 mother were distinguished. The conclusion by Dr. Landman is obvious: "The 48 fathers represent a fair cross-section of men in general. To generalize from these facts that great men beget great men would be clearly fallacious. Perhaps some of these fathers would have been sterilized if the advice of some of our eugenicists were accepted."
Dr. Caswell Grave, professor of. zoology at Washington University, asserts: "Rabbits produce rabbits, and fig-trees produce figs, not thistles; but it stops there, and genetics supports the saying of Lincoln that the Lord loved the common people because He made so many of them. Lincoln's own parents were of the commonest. Who's Who is full of the children of humble parents. Persons of ability often breed mediocre children, and mediocrity often produces children of marked ability.... If we had the intelligence and the authority to breed human beings as we breed horses, we might get some results; ... but, after all, no one knows what kind of human being is best to breed." (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 28,1936.)
Stud farm tactics, even if they could be employed in the breeding of a super race, would not guarantee the genesis of a physically perfect people. Sir Arthur Keith, eminent British biologist, writing in the London Daily Mail, tells British eugenicists: "The most careful and expert breeder of blood stock knows how difficult it is to produce a 'Derby winner.' Yet his problem is simplicity itself compared with that which confronts the anthropologist who would breed 'Derby winners' in human form." Dr. Waldemar Kaempffert summarizes: "Heredity is a powerful factor, ... but it is not the only factor.... It fails to explain the sudden flowering of a Shakespeare, an Abraham Lincoln, a John Keats, from unexceptional stocks. 'Like produces like' is not a generally applicable principle." In Napoleon and Julius Caesar, genius, as the world understands it, has sprung from epilepsy. Now, it may be argued that the world would have been better without these two men; but the other leaders in all branches of human affairs who would have been deprived of their existence had the articles of strict eugenics been legalized deal a veritable solar-plexus blow to these claims.
Fundamentally the eugenic theories also suffer from an over stress of the physical and mental. They assert that, given a healthy race, its heredity will be both healthy and happy. Yet as "man shall not live by bread alone," so national existence, cultural progress, in short, the highest and best of life, comes not by mating perfect specimens of men and women "but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" (Matt. 4:4). Ultimately eugenics leaves no room for God. If we cannot run the world of today without God, how can we hope to govern the generation of tomorrow without divine sanction and supervision? Even if this race building program were biologically possible, the stem element of sin can in a brief moment puff over the house of eugenic cards that has been years in the building.
This cult of the superman imposes a social injustice. It operates to the detriment of the poor. Eugenic literature abounds in case histories centering in tenement districts; and the condescension which is poured out on the less fortunate of humanity is a startling contradiction of Christian ideals. The everlasting poor often have health records that can bear favorable comparison with the vital statistics of royalty's highest castes. To prevent underprivileged individuals from accepting their inalienable and divinely bestowed pleasures of parenthood is not only a physiological error, but it is also an act of presumptuous discrimination.
In this abridgment of personal liberty applied eugenics shows its true colors. Well did Chesterton protest against such ultimate tyranny: "Law and creed and custom have never concentrated heavily except upon fixing and keeping the family when once it has been made. The act of founding the family, I repeat, was an individual adventure outside the frontiers of the state. Our first, forgotten ancestors left this tradition behind them, and our own latest fathers and mothers a few years ago would have thought us lunatics to be discussing it. The shortest general definition of eugenics on its practical side is that it does, in a more or less degree, propose to control some families at least as if they were families of pagan slaves." (Eugenics and Other Evils, p. 10.)
If the state (except in the case of criminals) prohibits marriage to any person who is capable of exercising its functions and of whom it cannot be stated definitely that his progeny will be a social liability, this is an unwarranted restriction of personal liberty. The state may exercise its authority in segregating a person hostile to community interests (imprisonment) or whose influence may involve physical contamination and infection (isolation); but if in other cases the question be that of sterilization, it should stand on indubitable ground. Unless in each given case the demonstration can be completed, for example, that imbecility will beget imbecility, the state should not attempt to exercise jurisdiction over the bodies of its citizens. Even then the program of sterilization produces many serious complications and creates many new problems.
This treatment of degenerates and criminals is also open to serious objection, as Dr. Martin Ulbrich mentions in Der Geistes-kampf der Gegenwart fuer christliche Bildung und Weltanschauung, 1930, pp. 427429: "The social pathologist is forced to raise one objection in particular. If he is asked whence most degenerate persons come from, he finds that they are not produced by their own kind, but are the offspring of normal people, who have undermined their healthy disposition through some misconduct. We are reminded of the many children of drunkards who are victims of alcohol, of the sick children of syphilitic fathers, and of children who before their birth were abused by injurious means, because they were not to come alive into the world, and of the children born in consanguineous marriages who must carry the double burden which both parents have caused them to bear. But these long lists of criminals just mentioned are exceptions, and it is not probable that they would be affected by any sterilization law. The fact is that most of the evils of degeneracy thrive in the circle of those who ignore all morality and decency and who are involved in the worst crimes of the race."
Much sound reasoning will also be found in Dr. Ulbrich's conclusion: "A legal enforcement of sterilization will not achieve the desired results. The best remedy is a comprehensive prophylaxis, which checks the national evils, establishes discipline and order, and promotes decency and morality. In the case of degenerate persons who are liable to reproduce morally defective offspring, it is a better plan to place them, without delay, into protective homes and asylums, where pernicious influences are removed and where those who are afflicted by sinful tendencies are placed at the feet of their Savior to be their Liberator. There are children who give evidence of such developed traits of degeneracy that it is evident how these will develop if they are left to themselves. In order that these may be subjected without delay to helping hands laws, means, and places of refuge should be provided in time. The earlier the prevention is applied, the more effective will the help be. The more these are fortified, the less will the dangers be. An extensive and comprehensive aid will make every sterilization law superfluous and will spare the community the necessity of an operation which is cruel in spite of the perfected technique, which is in reality nothing less than a theft of the person's human dignity, perpetrated moreover against an unfortunate victim who has already been severely enough afflicted."
The American Neurological Association, subsidized by a grant from the Carnegie Foundation, has a committee of distinguished scientists at work in an objective study of sterilization and its social effects. In a report discussed by the New York Times (February 11, 1936) this committee agreed with the British Departmental Committee on Sterilization in concluding that, "considering how little is known about the mechanism of heredity, the time has not yet arrived to weed out supposedly hereditary defectives and that sterilization is scientifically justified only in a few rare, selected cases."
This summary of the American Neurological Association's report must be disheartening to eugenicists: "The familiar picture of a race which is degenerating because the mental defectives are out propagating the rest of us is much too alarming. The hereditary effect in feeble mindedness cannot be denied; but to argue, as the eugenicists do, that we are likely to be swamped by the untypical Nams, Kallikaks and Jukes, is to substitute fear and emotion for science and reason. Properly interpreted, the statistics show that the huge families- of the feeble-minded are mythical and that the ever-growing admission to institutions prove nothing because we live longer nowadays and because disease in general is more likely to affect the old than the young. 'Statistical gossip' has taken the place of sound judgment. The selective and therefore the eugenic effects of marriage are generally ignored. What are called 'psychotic individuals' are not as fertile as the general population. Even the feeble-minded breed no more rapidly than the lower and middle classes. Moreover, the death rate in all forms of mental disease and feeble-mindedness is definitely higher than the average.... Before we can legislate the hereditarily unfit out of society, we need facts. . . . Much of the work thus far done on the inheritance of diseases is of questionable scientific validity, with the result that our sterilization laws are based more on a laudable desire to improve humanity than on real knowledge. Particularly important is the relation too often ignored by the eugenicists. If diabetes tends to run in families but is nevertheless controlled by means of insulin, is it too much to hope that some of the feeble minded may be saved through medicine or other external agencies? Ten years and more may elapse before facts are gathered on which a sound legislative policy can be based. But until they are gathered, it is simply folly to place upon the books laws which reflect the good intentions of enthusiasts rather than the findings of sober biologists."
Another objection to the plans of radical eugenics is its open alliance with easy divorce and birth control, the inevitable corollaries of selective breeding.
The impracticability of eugenic control and operation is likewise evident. Sir Arthur Keith, visualizing the theory in the concrete rather than the abstract, writes (l. c.): "The eugenicist at once comes up against his first difficulty; the men and women who are willing to submit must be those who are destitute of the most desirable of all human qualities independence, the urge for individual liberty. Even if he succeeds in assembling a selected community, what kind of men and women would they be that obeyed the dictates of the eugenicist? And then, the morality which must pervade such a eugenical establishment. There can be no soft heartedness on the part of the man in charge; the undesirables have to be ruthlessly weeded out and cast mercilessly aside as soon as detected; mercy and charity become vices in such an establishment."
The case against eugenics is not complete without a survey of its extremes. In A Vision of the Future Richard Marvin Chapman presents a positively weird picture of tomorrow's Utopian state. This Elysium has no homes as we know them today. Children are born in "birth houses." "When the skin of the child is sufficiently tough and a statutory time has expired, the nativity number, omitting the epoch or century, will be indelibly stamped (tattooed) on each side just below the armpit." (P. 24.) Later the eugenic child is moved from the "birth house to the nursery, with varying degrees of elegance and luxury." (P. 31.) If, after the eugenic child is born, the eugenic mother does not care to return to her eugenic husband, the statutes of the eugenic state say to her in effect: "My dear, you need not go; stay here. We, the state, will send your child to a place where it will be fed, clothed, trained, and educated by kind and capable teachers, cared for during illness by kind and capable doctors and nurses, and given the happiest and best possible childhood that ample means, kind hearts, and experienced judgment can bestow. As for yourself, you will be assigned to one of the numerous positions of civil service in the birth houses, kindergartens, and other institutions, for which only mothers are eligible, and for the duties of which your training and performance while here have qualified you." (P. 40.) The mother can automatically be freed for subsequent remarriage, although with her new husband she must reimburse the state thereafter for the care of her child, which grows up largely as the ward of the state.
The preparation for marriage will be particularly trying in the eugenic state. Chapman's account of courtship reminds one of examining the pedigree of cows and of reading the verdicts of stock appraisers. We are told: "When finally deciding to be consorts, the young people will exchange identification dockets and memoranda of their respective physicians. The youth and the maid will each take the docket received from the other, and, together with one of their own, they will transmit them to their own birth house with an application for a marriage license. Each of them must procure such license independently of the other.... The license will then be transmitted by their respective birth houses to their respective physicians at the addresses given. The bride's license will be sent to her physician, and the groom's license will be sent to his physician, who will both receive them in due course.
"The physicians will then meet, enter into joint consultation, and in each other's presence will be admitted to the lodgings of both bride and groom, where, in a room especially appointed therefore in both of the respective lodgings, the bride and groom will in turn be subjected to a thorough and searching physical examination by both of the physicians simultaneously and jointly." (Pp. 91, 92.) When the whirl of this eugenic life is completed and the new couple have their first child, this amazing procedure is then in order: "When the child is born, both licenses will be returned to the birth house where granted and there canceled. The romance will have turned its full circle and be complete. The father is now free to form a new attachment if he elects to do so, in which case he must repeat the entire procedure and conform to such requirements over again." (P. 98.)
These absurdities are extreme, we readily concede; but they differ only in degree from the premeditated claims of professional eugenicists. Frederick W. Seward, M.D., told the Eastern Homeopathic Medical Society: "Ages ago man captured the wild horse. Today we have the delicately formed, fast-running racing horse and other types. We are led to the conclusion that, if man could breed the human race, he could produce definite and pronounced results. He could make a race of giants and another race of pigmies. He could mate individuals with similar pronounced features and produce a race with those pronounced features exaggerated and perfected. He could produce a race of strong men with muscles and another race of wise with brains to plan and discover." (The Making of a New Race, p. 3.)
Prof. H. J. Muller of the University of Texas offers a biologist's prophecy of the future race as controlled by man himself. Professor Muller is a scientist of first rank. Waldemar Kaempffert, describing him in the New York Times, March 15, 1936, says:
"It was he who first turned X-rays on the eggs of fruit-flies with results that still daze biologists. At one fell stroke he obtained mutations which gave the doctrine of evolution new meaning. When some future historian contrasts our barbaric twentieth century with his own happy era, he will not stint himself in praising Muller. 'To his monstrous fruit-flies we trace the first deliberate, successful scientific interference with the processes of heredity by external agencies,' he will say of the Texan professor." But Professor Muller is also an ardent disciple of Karl Marx, and it may be that the Marxian ideals of race evolution have distorted his scientific judgment. At least in his Out of the Night he draws a geneticist's picture of the future and declares that "even today only a relatively slight advance [over the Drosophylla fruit fly experiments] in the technique would be needed to enable us safely and without incision" to transplant the germ of life to women "possessing characters peculiarly excellent." With this advance realized, he exclaims: "How many women in an enlightened community devoid of superstitious taboos and sex slavery would be eager and proud to bear and rear a child of Lenin or Darwin! Is it not obvious that restraint, rather than compulsion, would be called for?"
The daughter of a Yale University neurologist carried these eugenic theories to their ultimate consequences when she took "a young man of good family and good character with the proper eugenic background" and without public marriage made him the father of her eugenic but illegitimate child, Vera.
Dr. Pierre Bertillon of the French Psychopathic Laboratories is quoted in the New York World, November 27, 1926, as suggesting that before any infatuated couple proceeds to the marriage court, they should be required legally to "make a detour by the municipal laboratories to determine scientifically whether their atoms fuse" to see by scientific tests whether their marriage would be a physiological or a psychological error.
It is with an undisguised feeling of relief that we turn from the vagaries of these eugenic absurdities to the plain sense of duty in matters of health inculcated by the Christian religion. If all the young people of the nation could be brought to understand that by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit their bodies are temples of God, that these sanctuaries must not be profaned, that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate God, that those who sow to the flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, this realization of our responsibilities in matters of physical welfare, coupled with the corresponding understanding of our own intimate relation to the bodies of our descendants, would do more than a thousand thousand years of eugenic dreaming.
A closely related subject is consanguineous marriage. In the eighteenth chapter of Leviticus the general rule is laid down: "None of you shall approach [in marriage] to any that is near of kin to him" (v. 6). Then follows a list of prohibited degrees covering forbidden relationship both by blood (consanguinity) and by marriage (affinity). The wisdom and blessing of this moral legislation is apparent, because these incestuous relations, which run counter to all instinctive feelings, are too often characterized by sterility or unfortunate progeny. Little need be said to emphasize the prohibition against these unnatural unions; among all normal young people they condemn themselves. (For a discussion of the forbidden degrees of marriage see Pastoral Theology, by John H. C. Fritz, p. 162 ff.)
The historical observation that inbreeding is taboo among large groups of primitive peoples and that nations in antiquity, from the day of Hammurabi, enacted clean-cut legislation against close intermarriage sweeps away the charge that the antipathy to incest is of Old Testament origin. The stereotyped references to the brother-sister, uncle-niece marriages among the Ptolemies, successors to Alexander the Great as rulers of Egypt and adjacent territory, can by no means justify the approval of incest which ultraliberal sociologists have voiced. When Albert Edward Wiggam (The Fruit of the Family Tree, p. 140) speaks of the Ptolemies (whose genealogical chart shows many brother-sister unions) as "the wonderful family ... which furnished illustrious and able rulers for centuries," he is closing his eyes to history. Listen to the verdict of a historian. Prof. Edwyn Bevan of Oxford finds the Ptolemies anything but a "wonderful family." He characterizes the outstanding of the Ptolemies in this way:
Ptolemy I: "Murderer and usurper."
Ptolemy II: "Had many brilliant mistresses, and his court, magnificent and dissolute, intellectual and artificial, has justly been compared with the Versailles, of Louis XIV."
Ptolemy IV: "A wretched debauchee, . . . murderer of his mother, . . . always under the dominion of his favorites, male or female, who indulged his vices."
Ptolemy V: "Cruel, perfidious, tyrannical."
Ptolemy VII: "Of bloated appearance, ... a man untouched by natural affection, delighting in deeds of blood, his body as loathsome in its blown corpulence as his soul."
Of much practical importance is an understanding of the principles involved in the marriage of first cousins. No Scriptural statement bans this union; there are, however, in our country these States which prohibit the marriage of first cousins: Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, the Dakotas, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina (includes double first cousins only), Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Washington, West Virginia (includes double cousins), Wisconsin, Wyoming. (See Russell Sage Foundation Report, Marriage Laws and Decisions in the United States, p. 477.) Cousins who live in these States cannot marry without breaking the laws of their commonwealth. Where no civil impediment exists, the Church raises no protest. Young people who find that their love focuses on their cousins should, however, be acquainted with the following facts:
Studies in the effects of first-cousin marriages stress at least two definite results: First of all, inheritable weaknesses are accentuated in the children born of these unions. Investigations of hereditary lines characterized by deaf mutism have shown that, though the parents are free of this defect, it may make its appearance in the children of consanguineous marriages because of the deaf mutism latent in their heredity. (E. Elderton, Marriage of First Cousins.) Dr. Knight Dunlap, professor of experimental psychology in Johns Hopkins University, illustrates this point by references to abnormal mentality. He says: "Feeble mindedness furnishes a good illustration of the results of breeding. Some of the progeny of the union of a sound and a feeble minded parent will be sound; but they carry in their germ cells the 'determinant of feeble mindedness and transmit it to a certain proportion of their own progeny. If two persons both of whom carry this determinant mate, the characteristic will reappear in certain of their progeny (that is, some of their children will be feeble minded) although the characteristic may have been latent for several generations. Obviously parents who both come from feeble-minded stock are more apt to possess this determinant than parents of diverse stock; hence we see the feeble mindedness reappearing strikingly in certain cases of consanguineous marriages. The situation with regard to other weaknesses is similar." (Personal Beauty and Racial Betterment, pp. 72, 73.)
In addition, infant mortality is greater in consanguineous marriages. A table furnished by Elderton places the death-rate for children of first-cousin marriages at 16.7 percent, while that of non-consanguineous marriages drops to 11.6 percent.
Biological investigators have tried to answer the practical question as to when ancestral defects make cousin marriage dangerous. They suggest that, if the same defect has not appeared in both lines of descent in three generations, cousins may intermarry with as little fear of having defective children as in any normal union. This statement has, however, not remained unchallenged.
On the other hand, points of strength in first cousins who intermarry are often emphasized in their offspring. A classical illustration is furnished by the remarkable record of the Bach family, which produced many distinguished musicians, in a line of descent featuring many intermarriages. Other notable instances of genealogical lines in which cousin marriages were relatively frequent and successful are found in the family histories of President Benjamin Harrison, Charles Darwin, and the Kembles of Great Britain.
Dr. Charles B. Davenport, head of the department of genetics at the Carnegie Institute of Washington, asserts: "There is no biological reason for concluding that the marriage of cousins in itself will lead to defective offspring.... Numerous and extended researches on the inbreeding of mammals have shown that inbreeding itself is not necessarily harmful. The damage appears to be due to the existence of latent or recessive traits of an undesirable character brought to expression by inbreeding." He concludes with the warning: "The history of mankind is full of the instances of defective offspring from cousins." Dr. George Harrison Shull of Princeton University, who contributed to the symposium on cousin marriages for which Dr. Davenport wrote, feels that the principles reached in the developing of varieties of plants and the breeds of animals are not applicable to human eugenics. He has a much more conservative opinion, holding that there is no reason for altering the present feeling of antipathy against such unions.
It may be stated, in summary, that as the Scriptures pass no judgment on cousin marriages, two young people thus related who have demonstrably healthy antecedents and no hereditary defects may live happily in marriage. But because of the element of uncertainty in the mysteries of heredity it should be clear that some intermarriages of cousins are fraught with dangers, which must not be minimized.