A Troublesome Inheritance Read online

  To Gobineau’s assertion of inequality between races was then added the divisive idea that the various human populations represented not just different races but also different species. A leading proponent of this belief was the Philadelphia physician Samuel Morton.

  Morton’s views were driven into error not by prejudice but by his religious faith. He was troubled by the fact that black and white people were depicted in Egyptian art from 3000 BC yet the world itself had been created only in 4004 BC, according to the widely accepted chronology drawn up by Archbishop Ussher from information derived from the Old Testament and elsewhere. This was not enough time for different races to emerge, so the races must have been created separately, Morton argued, a valid inference if Ussher’s chronology had been even remotely correct.

  Morton amassed a large collection of skulls from all over the world, measuring the volume occupied by the brain and other details that in his view established the distinctness of the four principal races. He effectively ranked them in a hierarchy by adding subjective descriptions of each race’s behavior to his careful anatomical measurements of their skulls. Europeans are the earth’s “fairest inhabitants,” he wrote. Next were Mongolians, meaning East Asians, deemed “ingenious, imitative and highly susceptible of cultivation.” Third place was assigned to Americans, meaning Native Americans, whose mental faculties appeared to Morton as locked in a “continual childhood,” and fourth were Negroes, or Africans, who Morton said “have little invention, but strong powers of imitation, so that they readily acquire mechanic arts.”

  Morton was an academic and did not promote any practical consequences of his ideas. But his followers had no hesitation in spelling out their interpretation that the races had been created separately, that blacks were inferior to whites and that the slavery of the American South was therefore justified.

  Morton’s data present an interesting case study of how a scientist’s preconceptions can affect his results, despite the emphasis in scientific training on the critical importance of objectivity. The Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould, a widely read essayist, accused Morton of having mismeasured the cranial volumes of African and Caucasian skulls in order to support the view that brain size is related to intelligence. Gould didn’t remeasure Morton’s skulls, but he recomputed Morton’s published statistical analysis and estimated that all four races had skull volumes of about the same size. Gould’s accusations were published in Science and in his widely cited 1981 book The Mismeasure of Man.

  But in a surprising recent twist, the bias now turns out to have been Gould’s. Morton did not in fact believe, as Gould asserted, that intelligence was correlated with brain size. Rather, he was measuring his skulls to study human variation as part of his inquiry into whether God had created the human races separately. A team of physical anthropologists remeasured all of the skulls they could identify in Morton’s collection and found his measurements were almost invariably correct. It was Gould’s statistics that were in error, they reported, and the errors lay in the direction of supporting Gould’s incorrect belief that there was no difference in cranial capacity between Morton’s groups. “Ironically, Gould’s own analysis of Morton is likely the stronger example of a bias influencing results,” the Pennsylvania team wrote.4

  The authors noted that “Morton, in the hands of Stephen Jay Gould, has served for 30 years as a textbook example of scientific misconduct.” Moreover Gould had suggested that science as a whole is an imperfect process because bias such as Morton’s is common. This, the authors suggested, is incorrect: “The Morton case, rather than illustrating the ubiquity of bias, instead shows the ability of science to escape the bounds and blinders of cultural contexts.”

  There are two lessons to be drawn from the Morton-Gould imbroglio. One is that scientists, despite their training to be objective observers, are as fallible as anyone else when their emotions or politics are involved, whether they come from the right or, as in Gould’s case, from the left.

  A second is that, despite the personal failings of some scientists, science as a knowledge-generating system does tend to correct itself, though often only after considerable delay. It is during these delay periods that great harm can be caused by those who use uncorrected scientific findings to propagate injurious policies. Scientists’ attempts to classify human races and to understand the proper scope of eugenics were both hijacked before the two fields could be fully corrected.

  A firm refutation of the idea that human races were different species was supplied by Darwin. In On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, he laid out his theory of evolution but, perhaps preferring to take one step at a time, said nothing in particular about the human species. Humans were covered in his second volume, The Descent of Man, which appeared 12 years later. With his unerring good sense and insight, Darwin decreed that the human races, however distinct they might appear, were not nearly different enough to be considered separate species, as the followers of Samuel Morton and others were contending.

  He started out by observing that “if a naturalist, who had never before seen a Negro, Hottentot, Australian or Mongolian, were to compare them . . . he would assuredly declare that they were as good species as many to which he had been in the habit of affixing specific names.”

  In support of such a view (Darwin is making the best contrary case before he knocks it down), he noted that the various human races are fed on by different kinds of lice. “The surgeon of a whaling ship in the Pacific”—Darwin had a far-flung network of informants—“assured me that when the Pediculi, with which some Sandwich Islanders on board swarmed, strayed onto the bodies of the English sailors, they died in the course of three or four days.” So if the parasites on human races are distinct species, it “might fairly be urged as an argument that the races themselves ought to be classified as distinct species,” Darwin suggested.

  On the other hand, whenever two human races occupy the same area, they interbreed, Darwin noted. Also, the distinctive traits of each race are highly variable. Darwin cited the example of the extended labia minora (“Hottentot apron”) of bushmen women. Some women have the apron, but not all do.

  The strongest argument against treating the races of men as separate species, in Darwin’s view, “is that they graduate into each other, independently in many cases, as far as we can judge, of their having intercrossed.” This graduation is so extensive that people trying to enumerate the number of human races were all over the map in their estimates, which ranged from 1 to 63, Darwin noted. But every naturalist trying to describe a group of highly varying organisms will do well to unite them into a single species, Darwin observed, for “he has no right to give names to objects which he cannot define.”

  Anyone reading works of anthropology can hardly fail to be impressed by the similarities between the races. Darwin noted “the pleasure which they all take in dancing, rude music, acting, painting, tattooing and otherwise decorating themselves; in their mutual comprehension of gesture-language, by the same expression in their features, and by the same inarticulate cries, when excited by the same emotions.” When the principle of evolution is accepted, “as it surely will be before long,” Darwin wrote hopefully, the dispute as to whether humans belong to a single species or many “will die a silent and unobserved death.”

  Social Darwinism and Eugenics

  Darwin, by force of his authority, could put the idea of many human species to rest. Despite his best efforts, he had less success in throttling the political movement called Social Darwinism. This was the proposition that just as in nature the fittest survive and the weak are pushed to the wall, the same rule should prevail in human societies too, lest nations be debilitated by the poor and sick having too many children.

  The promoter of this idea was not Darwin but the English philosopher Herbert Spencer. Spencer developed a theory about the evolution of society, which held that ethical progress depended on people adapting to current conditions. The theory
was developed independently of Darwin’s and lacked any of the extensive biological research on which Darwin’s was based. Still, it was Spencer who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest,” which Darwin adopted.

  Spencer argued that government aid that would allow the poor and sickly to propagate would impede society’s adaptation. Even government support for education should be cut off, lest it postpone the elimination of those who failed to adapt. Spencer was one of the most prominent intellectuals of the second half of the 19th century, and his ideas, however harsh they may seem today, were widely discussed in both Europe and America.

  Darwin’s theory of evolution, at least in its author’s eyes, dealt solely with the natural world. Yet it was as attractive to political theorists as a candle’s flame is to moths. Karl Marx asked if he could dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin, an honor the great naturalist declined.5 Darwin’s name was slapped on to Spencer’s political ideas, which would far more accurately have been called Social Spencerism. Darwin himself demolished them in a lapidary reproof.

  Yes, vaccination has saved millions whose weaker constitutions would otherwise have let them succumb to smallpox, Darwin wrote. And yes, the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind, which, to judge from animal breeding, “must be highly injurious to the race of man.” But the aid we feel impelled to give to the helpless is part of our social instincts, Darwin said. “Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature,” he wrote. “If we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.” 6

  Had Darwin’s advice been heeded, a disastrous turn in 20th century history might have been somewhat less inevitable. But for many intellectuals, theoretical benefits often outweigh overwhelming present evils. Airy notions of racial improvement drove the eugenics movement, which over many decades created the mental climate for the mass exterminations conducted by the National Socialists in Germany. Yet this catastrophe started out in such a different place. It started with Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton.

  Galton was a Victorian gentleman and polymath who made distinguished contributions to many fields of science. He invented several basic statistical techniques, such as the concepts of correlation, regression and standard deviation. He anticipated human behavior genetics by using twins to sort out the influences of nature and nurture. He devised the classification scheme still used in fingerprint identification. He drew the first weather map. Mischievously wondering how to test if prayers were answered, he noted that the English population had for centuries prayed each week in church for the long life of their sovereign, so that if prayer had any power at all, it should surely result in the greater longevity of English monarchs. His report that sovereigns were the shortest-lived of all rich people and hence that prayer had no positive effect was rejected by an editor as “too terribly conclusive and offensive not to raise a hornet’s nest” and lay unpublished for many years.7

  One of Galton’s principal interests was that of whether human abilities are hereditary. He compiled various lists of eminent people and looked for those who were related to one another. Within these families, he found that close relatives of the founder were more likely to be eminent than distant ones, establishing that intellectual distinction had a hereditary basis.

  Galton was compelled by contemporary critics to pay more attention to the fact that the children of eminent men had greater educational and other opportunities than others. He conceded that nurture was involved to some extent, even inventing the phrase “nature versus nurture” in doing so. But his interest in the inheritance of outstanding abilities remained. Darwin’s theory of evolution was now widely accepted in England and Galton, with his avidity for measuring human traits, was interested in the effect of natural selection on the English population.

  This line of thought now led him down a dangerous path, to the proposal that human populations could be improved by controlled breeding, just like those of domestic animals. His finding that eminence ran in families led him to propose that marriages between such families should be encouraged with monetary incentives so as to improve the race. For this goal, Galton coined another word, eugenics.

  In an unpublished novel, “Kantsaywhere,” Galton wrote that those who failed eugenic tests were to be confined to camps where they had to work hard and remain celibate. But this seems to have been mostly a thought experiment or fantasy in Galton’s mind. In his published work, he emphasized public education about eugenics and positive incentives for marriage among the eugenically fit.

  There is no particular reason to doubt the assessment of one of Galton’s biographers, Nicholas Gillham, that Galton “would have been horrified had he known that within little more than 20 years of his death forcible sterilization and murder would be carried out in the name of eugenics.” 8

  Galton’s ideas seemed reasonable at the time, given the knowledge of the day. Natural selection seemed to have loosened its grip on modern populations. Birth rates at the end of the 19th century were in decline, particularly sharply among the upper and middle classes. It seemed logical enough that the quality of the population would be improved if the upper classes could be encouraged to have more children. Galton’s ideas were favorably received. Honors flowed in. He was awarded the Darwin Medal of the Royal Society, England’s preeminent scientific institution. In 1908, three years before his death, he received a knighthood, a mark of establishment approval. No one then understood that he had unwittingly sown the dragon’s teeth.

  The lure of Galton’s eugenics was his belief that society would be better off if the intellectually eminent could be encouraged to have more children. What scholar could disagree with that? More of a good thing must surely be better. In fact it is far from certain that this would be a desirable outcome. Intellectuals as a class are notoriously prone to fine-sounding theoretical schemes that lead to catastrophe, such as Social Darwinism, Marxism or indeed eugenics.

  By analogy with animal breeding, people could no doubt be bred, if it were ethically acceptable, so as to enhance specific desired traits. But it is impossible to know what traits would benefit society as a whole. The eugenics program, however reasonable it might seem, was basically incoherent.

  And in terms of practicalities, it held a fatal diversion. Galton’s idea of eugenics was to induce the rich and middle class to change their marriage habits and bear more children. But positive eugenics, as such a proposal is known, was a political nonstarter. Negative eugenics, the segregation or sterilization of those deemed unfit, was much easier to put into practice.

  In 1900 Mendel’s laws of genetics, ignored in his lifetime, were rediscovered. Geneticists, by combining his laws with the statistical methods developed by Galton and others, started to develop the powerful subdiscipline known as population genetics. Leading geneticists on both sides of the Atlantic used their newfound authority to promote eugenic ideas. In doing so, they unleashed an idea whose deeply malignant powers they proved unable to control.

  The principal organizer of the new eugenics movement was Charles Davenport. He earned a doctorate in biology from Harvard and taught zoology at Harvard, the University of Chicago, and the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences Biological Laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. Davenport’s views on eugenics were motivated by disdain for races other than his own: “Can we build a wall high enough around this country so as to keep out these cheaper races, or will it be a feeble dam . . . leaving it to our descendants to abandon the country to the blacks, browns and yellows and seek an asylum in New Zealand?” he wrote.9

  A heavy wave of immigrants arrived in the United States between 1890 and 1920, creating a climate of concern that was favorable for eugenic ideas. Davenport, though he had no special distinction as a scientist, found it easy to raise money for his eugenics program. He secured funds from leading philanthropi
es, such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the recently founded Carnegie Institution. Scouring a list of wealthy families on Long Island, he came across the name of Mary Harriman, daughter of the railroad magnate E. H. Harriman. Mary, as it happened, was so interested in eugenics that her nickname in college had been Eugenia. She provided Davenport funds to set up his Eugenics Record Office, which was intended to register the genetic backgrounds of the American population and distinguish between good and defective lineages.10

  The Carnegie and Rockefeller institutions don’t give money to just anyone, but rather to fields of research that their advisers judge promising. These advisers shared the generally favorable view of eugenics that then prevailed among scientists and many intellectuals. The Eugenics Research Association included members from Harvard, Columbia, Yale and Johns Hopkins.11

  “In America, the eugenic priesthood included much of the early leadership responsible for the extension of Mendelism,” writes the science historian Daniel Kevles. “Besides Davenport, there were Raymond Pearl and Herbert S. Jennings, both of Johns Hopkins University; Clarence Little, the president of the University of Michigan and later the founder of the Jackson Laboratory in Maine; and the Harvard professors Edward M. East and William E. Castle. . . . The large majority of American colleges and universities—including Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, Wisconsin, Northwestern, and Berkeley—offered well-attended courses in eugenics, or genetics courses that incorporated eugenic material.” 12

  The same conclusion is drawn by another historian of the eugenics movement, Edwin Black: “The elite thinkers of American medicine, science and higher education were busy expanding the body of eugenic knowledge and evangelizing its tenets,” he wrote. 13

  Where so many eminent scientists led, others followed. Former president Theodore Roosevelt wrote to Davenport in 1913, “We have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type.” 14 The eugenics program reached a pinnacle of acceptance when it received the imprimatur of the U.S. Supreme Court. The court was considering an appeal by Carrie Buck, a woman whom the State of Virginia wished to sterilize on the grounds that she, her mother and her daughter were mentally impaired.