Primitive eugenics / by A.E. Crawley.

  • Crawley, A. E. (Alfred Ernest), 1869-1924.
Date:
[1910?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Primitive eugenics / by A.E. Crawley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    attribute of savage life, as was once supposed, the sexual life of savages is rigidly controlled both within and without. Its energy is normal and periodic. Not the least beneficial of these tabus is that which secures to the savage mother a period of some years for suckling a child, without the risk of having another. Again, such infanticide as occurs in savage societies is the result of forethought. Better, argues the savage, not rear a child at all, than “ drag it up ” under hopeless conditions, to be a weakly and degenerate specimen of the race. One typical example of the results of these conditions may be cited, namely, the Fijians, who marry their cousins and have a well-developed system of sexual tabu. They are physically an extremely tall, well-built, healthy and competent race. The fact that such peoples do not survive when pitchforked into civilisa¬ tion, so called, or when the blessings and the bacilli of the same are disseminated among them, is no argument that they a re unfit. On the contrary they are fit, though, now, alas 1 but few.. It may be that it is we who are both unfit, unfew. Men like the Maoris, Polynesians and Fijians are handicapped merely because they have not run the gauntlet of civilised squalor, misery, and disease for a thousand years or so. Consequently they are not immune even against measles, not to speak of other endemic fermentations, including industrial competition. Yet in health, physique and physical pride they are superior to all but our best specimens; their mental qualities are equal to ours—they only seem inferior because of that thousand years or so of training in the illegitimate use of analytical language, whose symbols are regarded as concrete realities and adequate casus belli, theologorum vel politicorum. Meanwhile, we ourselves are becoming—what ?—“ A race of men, small, ill-formed, disease-stricken, hard to kill.” We have referred to the interesting way in which early societies kept the balance between in-breeding and crossing. That balance was kept by exogamy, which involves a considerable amount of cousin-marriage. A development of exogamy, seen in Australia and known as the sub-phratry system, has another result, which it would be well if it could be applied to-day in Europe. Let us take the case of