Via NLT, here’s an excerpt from a textbook at the center of the Scopes trial.
Evolution of Man. – Undoubtedly there once lived upon the earth races of men who were much lower in their mental organization than the present inhabitants. If we follow the early history of man upon the earth, we find that at first he must have been little better than one of the lower animals. He was a nomad, wandering from place to place, feeding upon whatever living things he could kill with his hands. Gradually he must have learned to use weapons, and thus kill his prey, first using rough stone implements for this purpose. As man became more civilized, implements of bronze and of iron were used. About this time the subjugation and domestication of animals began to take place. Man then began to cultivate the fields, and to have a fixed place of abode other than a cave. The beginnings of civilization were long ago, but even to-day the earth is not entirely civilized.
The Races of Man. – At the present time there exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; the American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest race type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.
Charles Darwin and Natural Selection. – The great Englishman Charles Darwin was one of the first scientists to realize how this great force of heredity applied to the development or evolution of plants and animals. He knew that although animals and plants were like their ancestors, they also tended to vary. In nature, the variations which best fitted a plant or animal for life in its own environment were the ones which were handed down because those having variations which were not fitted for life in that particular environment would die. Thus nature seized upon favorable variations and after a time, as the descendants of each of these individuals also tended to vary, a new species of plant or animal, fitted for the place it had to live in, would be gradually evolved.
Artificial Selection. – Darwin reasoned that if nature seized upon favorable variants, then man by selecting the variants he wanted could form new varieties of plants or animals much more quickly than nature. And so to-day plant or animal breeders select the forms having the characters they wish to perpetuate and breed them together. This method used by plant and animal breeders is known as selection.
Improvement of Man. – If the stock of domesticated animals can be improved, it is not unfair to ask if the health and vigor of the future generations of men and women on the earth might be improved by applying to them the laws of selection. This improvement of the future race has a number of factors in which as individuals may play a part. These are personal hygiene, selection of healthy mates, and the betterment of the environment.
Eugenics. – When people marry there are certain things that the individual as well as the race should demand. The most important of these is freedom from germ diseases which might be handed down to the offspring. Tuberculosis, syphilis, that dread disease which cripples and kills hundreds of thousands of innocent children, epilepsy, and feeble-mindedness are handicaps which it is not only unfair but criminal to hand down to posterity. The science of being well born is called eugenics.
The Jukes. – Studies have been made on a number of different families in this country, in which mental and moral defects were present in one or both of the original parents. The “Jukes” family is a notorious example. The first mother is known as “Margaret, the mother of criminals.” In seventy-five years the progeny of the original generation has cost the state of New York over a million and a quarter dollars, besides giving over to the care of prisons and asylums considerably over a hundred feeble-minded, alcoholic, immoral, or criminal persons. Another case recently studied is the “Kallikak” family. This family has been traced back to the War of the Revolution, when a young soldier named Martin Kallikak seduced a feeble-minded girl. She had a feeble-minded son from whom there have been to the present time 480 descendants. Of these 33 were sexually immoral, 24 confirmed drunkards, 3 epileptics, and 143 feeble-minded. The man who started this terrible line of immorality and feeble-mindedness later married a normal Quaker girl. From this couple a line of 496 descendants have come, with no cases of feeble-mindedness. The evidence and the moral speak for themselves!
Parasitism and its Cost to Society. – Hundreds of families such as those described above exist to-day, spreading disease, immorality, and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites.
The Remedy. – If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting with success in this country.
I does seem that the views of the "enlightened" over the years have been characterized more by their certainty than by their sanity.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt's good to have the occasional reminder that history is not always a black and white as it's often presented. The "enlightened" position was often championed for downright evil reasons, and the "backwards" folks often had good reason to fear what would happen if the enlightened got their way.
I've seen too much of the scientific evidence for evolution to be skeptical of at least the basic premises. However, even today, it's occasionally used to justify things that would have horrified Darwin, and ought to horrify any humane being.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseProgressivism of the first part of the last century was greatly enamored of eugenics and by today's standards highly racist.
In fact, it was in many ways a kind of "Liberal Fascism." Somebody ought to write a book about that.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDang, Sherman, ya beat me to it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIs our evaluation of this passage aesthetic, ethical, or rational? The racial component is a distraction. One can extract it merely by using only the characteristics of an individual without any form of grouping. For example, If one were to say, low I.Q. is hereditary (regardless of the race of the individual) and low I.Q people are less productive than the higher I.Q. people, so it would be in everyone’s interest to painlessly sterilize everyone with an I.Q. below an 100. A generation latter, everyone is a better problem solver.
I’m not saying that this is what should be done, I’m asking upon what basis do we evaluate it? Often we hear that it is unfair to credit evolutionary theory with the injustices of say, the Nazis and the nineteenth century Imperialists, but to play the devil’s advocate, on what basis? If we use a rational (or factual) basis, we must say something like, “All members of a given race are not the same. There are aboriginal tribesmen with I.Q.s of 130. It would be irrational bigotry to lump them together with people who had an I.Q. of 90.” True, but the devil’s advocate could say, “Let’s set aside race, and ethnicity, let’s just look at I.Q.” What do we say then?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe fact that we can no longer have peanuts on airplanes is attributable to advancements in medicine thanks to which people no longer go into anaphylactic shock and die when exposed to peanuts. And so, we have more people with peanut allergies to worry about when driving 5 kids to violin lessons in carpool.
But to follow the logic above is to say we should not only allow people to die following their exposure to peanuts, but should surreptitiously sprinkle peanuts about like a Joeseph Mengele version of Johnny Appleseed.
It would be a fascinating sociology experiment to rework this text slightly to bring it up to date. In defense of things like abortion, euthanasia and human cloning methinks this material would get a lot of defenders. The late 19th Century racial superiority thrust of the original is repugnant and easy to assault. But we sometimes forget that the basic line of thinking remains today in defense of equally barbaric practices producing equally reprehensible ends. But today, our political leaders call it "settled science".
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@Sherman, you wrote:
"Progressivism of the first part of the last century was greatly enamored of eugenics..."
And what of couples today using abortion to select the sex and physical attributes of their offspring? Or using detailed profiles of egg/sperm donors to optimize the milkshake?
All they've done is change the name, and give people a way to rationalize their way out of being called racists or IQ-ists or Downs-ists. I think I've read that 60%+ of all abortions are of African-American babies. Progressives have successfully turned 19th Century social and racial theory into 21st Century "lifestyle choices". Same eugenic ends, surreptitious means.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse>True, but the devil’s advocate could say, “Let’s set aside race, and ethnicity, let’s just look at I.Q.” What do we say then?
I think I'd point out that a significant number of these people are particularly talented in handling firearms, and I'll stay a safe distance back while you ask them how they'd feel about being sterilized.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI just happened to watch an episode of The American Experience called "The Lobotomist" last night. It's the story of the doctor who perfected and evangelized use of the lobotomy to "fix" mentally ill people by brain-damaging them.
The primary justification for lobotomies was that it eliminated the symptoms of mental illness that were hardest to deal with. Never mind the side effects -- like turning adults back into children, mentally. The important thing was that eliminating those symptoms made it easier for the rest of us to put up with them.
Incidentally, you can find the episode on Hulu Plus. It was fascinating.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"... in everyone’s interest to painlessly sterilize everyone with an I.Q. below an 100. A generation latter, everyone is a better problem solver."
Actually the world is not so tidy. Due to spontaneous mutation and regression to the mean one can not solve the problem of low IQ in a single generation or even across multiple generations by simply sterlizing the feeble-minded.
However, it is estimated that %60 of IQ is heritable so consider your future mate with some consideration of this fact. As my mother always tells me, when you wed you marry an entire family and all that they are both good and bad.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSterilizing people with IQs below 100 would surely lead to sub-par superbowls and supermodels (don't nitpick, it is a joke).
And why 100, because we are all comfortably above that number? Why not 130, wouldn't society be grand then?
I know a lot of bright idiots who are no more fit to reproduce than the first 400 names in the Boston telephone directory.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is absolutely delicious. I'm definately going to teach this in my classes now.
Here's the original text:
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Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePoint and stutter. Point and stutter. Personally I think it is great that white Americans back then had the self confidence to call themselves the 'best and highest' race. And why shouldn't they have? From the evidence around them, that appeared to be the case. Indeed despite the rise of China and India and the excellent performance of Asians in our schools, I am not sure that overall they still aren't correct.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMay I gently point out that this is, in fact, the second edition of "A Civic Biology," and the sections on the Jukes and Kallikaks, among other elements, was added to this section after the Scopes trial?
Just to be fair and accurate.
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Also, Darwin is often blamed for statements about application of evolution to human society that are actually said by Herbert Spencer. Social Darwinism is more accurately called Social Spencerism.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOn Parasitism and its Cost to Society, the textbook says, "Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money... They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites."
This sounds exactly like a modern-day conservative arguing against welfare, social security, medicare, and all entitlement programs. NR should be embracing this view, right? But oh wait, there's that nasty bit about white people being inherently superior to all others. Oops. I guess you can pick and choose what you find abhorrent and what you find agreeable from this "liberal fascist" text.
And btw, SouthOC, I'm Asian-American (technically Pakistani-American), and I and my other Asian-Am peers routinely out-perform the white kids on IQ tests, SATs, GREs, and other tests of intelligence/knowledge. Is that because we're genetically more intelligent? Maybe... but it probably has to do more with the fact that our parents are highly educated and they made sure we are highly educated. They immigrated as professionals back in the 60, 70s, and early 80s (doctors, engineers, scientists, etc.) and perhaps represented the cream-of-the-crop from their countries of origin.
In either case, education goes a lot further in creating good problem-solvers and innovators than the sequence of your genome. And the most intelligent problem-solvers and scientists agree with the theory of evolution by natural selection. The creationists who deny evolution are usually too dim-witted to understand the difficult scientific concepts of physics, chemistry, genetics, molecular biology, and geology.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLeftists like to sanitize and suppress the truth about the inhuman origins and bloody consequences of their ideologies--socialism, communism, eugenics, abortion, euthanasia, etc. Don't let them.
Texts like these are dark roots of the culture of death to which they owe allegiance. It doesn't stop here either. Men-pigs, or pig-men, or something even worse, are just one type of horrors their blind ideologies will visit on our future.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSome outstanding books that cover 19th and early 20th century eugenics, racism, and the Darwinist worldview are War Against the Weak by Edwin Black, From Darwin to Hitler by Richard Weikart, and The Imperial Cruise by James Bradley. Bradley's book contains quotes by 19th century American politicians that read as if they were given by Hitler.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI once owned an old 1890s Pennsylvania textbook that had a passage that read something like "The vast majority of Americans are Aryans, superior because our ancestors were hardy enough to have survived the harsh Northern European winters."
In reply to sfdenizen, the quote that you use actually sounds much more like Marxist/Socialist social engineers than thoughtful conservatives. In those great workers' paradises of China, the USSR, Cuba, 1970's Ethiopia and the like, it was and is routine for Leftist theorists and practitioners to dehumanize those persons who don't follow the party line. Marxists of the Old and New Left varieties regularly refer to non-approved persons and classes in subhuman terms such as "parasites," "running dogs," etc. And try reading the works of that New Left paragon Herbert Marcuse to see a similar dehumanization of opponents, in a form which is sadly still considered very acceptable in academic circles.
The Left today also routinely promotes policies which result in dehumanization. This especially includes promoting the dependency of great numbers of people on government assistance, and the assumption by government of so many functions such as charitable activities which were more effectively and healthily conducted by private associations and individuals.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"For example, If one were to say, low I.Q. is hereditary (regardless of the race of the individual) and low I.Q people are less productive than the higher I.Q. people, so it would be in everyone’s interest to painlessly sterilize everyone with an I.Q. below an 100. A generation latter, everyone is a better problem solver."
This is an example of good intentions and fuzzy thinking. IQ scores are statistical. 100 is the middle of the curve. How many generations of good intentions before the two survivors are arguing whether to round up or down to find the mean.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusesfdenizen,
SouthOC is either a lefty plant or a 17 year old living with his mother who somehow stumbled onto this site. The writers on this site produce nothing that reflects his post. I don't know why he is here (maybe he was being ironic and I missed it).
You don't understand the difference between endorsing forced sterilization and opposing deficit-inducing "charity"? The former deprives a right, while the latter refuses an unearned benefit provided by the forcible seizure of another's property. Big difference.
Also, not everybody who thinks that the theory of evolution doesn't necessarily have all of its t's crossed and i's dotted is a creationist. Darwinism is not so much especially convincing as it is the most palatable/plausible of all the ideas out there. The Matrix and The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy aren't too far behind.
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