NATIONS THAT DIE

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18896, 11 January 1927, Page 14

NATIONS THAT DIE

DEAN INGE ON EUGENICS. VISION OF THE FUTURE. OVR OWK COEBESPOSDIXT.) LONDON, November 27. "Racial Degeneration-" was tho subject of a remarknble address before the Roval College of Physicians by tho Dean of St. Paul's. Ho was delinking tho Lloyd Roberts lecture. He said ho had selected the negative rather than the positive side of eugenics not because he had a natural tendency to dwell on the dark side of the changes which were always going on in the human race, but because at present the negativo side was more important than tho positive side. Among his conclusions were tho fol-

lowing—"Natural selection lias almost ceased to operate in highly civilised States. If wo do not provide some rational substitute for it, Nature will punish us for-interfering with her methods of social hvgiene without providing anything to" take their place." •'Wo cannot have both wings and arms until wo become angels—if our limbs are good for running we cannot swim like fish." ' "Perhaps Nature lias expended nearly all her ingenuity. There have been 110 new classes since mammals and birds appeared. Even social evolution comes to an end. State Socialism can go 110 further than in the suffragette type of government in the beehive, a government run by maiden aunts." "There has been a gradual lowering of tho perfection of our sense organs. Our teeth haive decreased in size and strength. Our jaws are becoming too small for our teeth, our eyesight has deteriorated. ' Any ' physical other than degenerate, are -inhibited by the use of tools. Haying clothing and weapons-, wc need neither fur nor claws. 1 ' Press-the-Button Age. "Tho day may como when we shall bo ,a Me neither to walk nor write. We shall uso the motor-car for tho first and.,tho typewriter for the second.'You pres3 the button, we do the rest.' Nature may say, 'Very well, I will leave you just -enough intelligence, to press the' button.'" "Former civilisations disappeared because tho barbarians broke through the fence. It is unlikely, but not impossible, that such a disaster may again occur. The Russian nation has been almost completely decapitated. When Russia recovers civilisation she will have to go to Germany and other countries for arts and sciences. .. A world-wide revolution of the same kind, such as might follow another great war, would end our civilisation and plunge the world into another dark age, which might last for centuries. It might then bo found that the present population were less inventivci and lower in intelligence than the Europeans of- the Renaissance. . ''Undoubtedly industrial civilisation skims off the cream jn each generation and then throws much of it away. Unlimited i competition exhausts the vitality, physical and mental. ,In all the higher human activities competition is not the chief motive force, and in a nation organised solely for big business the higher activities languish. A millionaire is not tho supreme product of human progress. "There is a danger that human beings may become parasitic on the macbino they have made for their use. Machines have ousted .workers from natural human occupation. Apart from the machine they would be helpless even in the presence of abundant material, and would- either perish or exist miserably as savages.

Average Family In "Who's Who." ! '•Nations do hot grow old like individuals', but they do die of disease when the burden of civilisation becomes too heavy for the shoulders which have to bear it. That is why the present situation is so serious. If you take fifty or one hundred consecutive entries in 'Who's Who' at.random, you will find the children average two in each entry. That means the families of these moderately successful men are not keeping up their numbers. The classes which are best equipped intellectually and physically are passing into relative and oven.aosolutc decline. One might imagine in reading some-times-about the Pilgrim Fathers that the Mayflower ■ was the size of the Olympic. Really it was a.very small vessel, and the mortality among those who sailed in it was so great that only thirty-three of. them founded families. Nearly half the distinguished men of America were descended from that thirty-three. Race Improvement. "We must hope that, somehow social antitoxins will pe developed. We are not yet a degenerate people. 'We are a race to which any man might be proud to belong. But our society is not at present in a healthy condition, and unless we take the problem of racial decay in hand, probably it may be too late. We must persuade our countrymen that the really pressing problems are very different from those in which our politicians interest themselves'. This'-is 'a ' subject'-on' which doctors should speak out. Modern man may deny that lie has a soul, but he is acutely conscious that he has a body, and therefore he has a great respect for doctors."