Eugenics + racialism and other pertinent texts

[Felix Volkbein]

I will use this thread to post miscellaneous quotes, articles, and excerpts dealing with eugenics, the science of racial improvement. Expect continuous updates.

What better way to start than with the man who inaugurated the Rassenhygiene movement in Germany and one of the key influences on National Socialism -- Alfred Ploetz? The following comes from the Introduction to Die Tüchtigkeit unserer Rasse und der Schutz der Schwachen ("The Efficiency of our Race and the Protection of the Weak"). Tüchtigkeit could also be interpreted as "capability" or "competence." I'm not sure if this book has ever been published in English translation. The passage below was translated by Hadding Scott.

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http://www.encyclopedie.bseditions.fr/image/article/vignette/NAZIT4PORTRA0011.jpg

[TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: This passage supports my view that, yes there was an esoteric National-Socialism that was hostile to Christianity, but this esoteric National-Socialism was not the spooky mysticism or devil-worship described in some crazy literature that is promoted to Fundamentalist Christians in the US; rather it was scientific racism. Ploetz complains that Christianity has diminished the racial feeling in the masses, but on this point he contrasts "the small circle of leaders and researchers." These were the people who embraced the un-Christian thinkers, Darwin and Nietzsche, whom you will find mentioned frequently in medical and psychological literature from the Third Reich, but almost never in literature and speeches directed to the general public, which remained largely Christian and therefore not entirely reconciled to viewing man as a biological entity.]


Introduction to
Die Tüchtigkeit unserer Rasse und der Schutz der Schwachen
by Alfred Ploetz
(translated by Hadding Scott, 2008)

Peoples appear and vanish, some into nothing, like the Goths, others into insignificant mediocrity, like the Greeks. It was not always the worst that thus declined. The Goths, like the Greeks, had many excellent qualities; they were peoples of heroic temperament, and indeed they dwindled or withered away under influences to which they were not entirely adapted. Even today on our own border we see a people puzzlingly ill. The French as a race have stagnated; indeed they are declining in spite of the materially favorable conditions under which they live, and only the new generation of foreign immigrants upholds the French name -- but not the French race.

Peoples and races are just organic life-forms, determined like beasts and plants through their component parts – cells here, men there – for which their environment is a complex of favorable or unfavorable conditions. And just as we have, by the combination of favorable conditions, created a hygiene for man, which, based ultimately on the life of his cells, teaches him how he may maintain health as long as possible and postpone death, so is it high time, based on the vital functions of men, to attempt the founding of a hygiene of the races and of all mankind, which teaches how an organic collectivity of men may keep itself as vigorous as possible and postpone its perishing as long as possible.

The word race is used among men in various ways. Thus one speaks simply of the human race and means thereby the totality of mankind. One also needs that word however for the subdivisions into which the species Homo sapiens has been divided; one speaks for example of the Caucasian and the Mongoloid race. But one also needs this word for further classifications, such as for the Germans, Romans, etc. Furthermore it is convenient for the designation of contemporary racial mixtures that only appear as unities because of a shared language or political administration, as in the case of the French race, the British race, etc.

Apart from a brief discussion of the biological races in relation to their cultural value, I will use the word simply to designate a human collectivity existing through generations, in regard to its physical and mental qualities. This is all the more feasible since collective explanations up to the ones mentioned in the previous sentence are just as valid for small as for large communities of humans, for races in the zoological sense just as well as for mixed races and modern states. [...]

At first glance one could suppose that the conditions for the prosperity of a race were the same as the conditions for the prosperity of every single member of it, that racial hygiene and the customary hygiene of the individual were one and the same. This is not the case however without something further, and there are excellent researchers who even want to acknowledge a deep conflict between modern hygiene and racial well-being.

Wallace, the co-founder of the theory of natural selection, affirms this in the following words: “Hitherto it was generally assumed that beneficial influences, such as those of education, hygiene, social refinement, had a positive effect and must lead in and for themselves to a constant elevation of all civilized races. This view rests on the belief that every elevation of the individual accomplished during his life also carried over to his posterity, and that it thus will be possible, without even any selection of the better or elimination of the lower types, to create a constant progress in physical, moral, and mental qualities. But in the last years this opinion has been shaken with weighty doubt, namely by the significant researches of Galton and Weismann about the fundamental causes of heredity.”

Schallmayer expresses himself even more directly: “that the greatest conceivable advances which the therapeutic medicine of the future ever could make will probably restore the momentarily sick individual to health, but not mankind.”

The anthropologist Ammon expresses himself similarly in his interesting work about human selection: “Elimination – of the individuals most unfavorably equipped in regard to morality through administration of justice, economic misery, etc. – is a necessity, if the average level of humanity shall not decline. [...].”

Actually the demand of most Darwinians entails that the struggle for existence must be maintained within human society, a verdict of hygiene that would protect all, the strong and the weak, because otherwise the society would degenerate. I would need to cite too much in order to be fair to the numerous remarks of the Darwinians on this point.

Let the words of Darwin himself suffice: “As every other beast, man has without doubt reached his present exalted state through a struggle for survival as a consequence of his rapid multiplication, and if he shall progress even higher, it is to be feared that he must remain subject to a severe struggle.”

In any case it is apparent from the remarks of these men, including even the mild-mannered Darwin, that the view that the wellbeing of our race would be best attained through the improvement of living conditions for all individuals, is certainly not universally accepted.

Therefrom follows the necessity to balance the concept of hygiene in the usual sense, individual hygiene, with another concept, that of the hygiene of a human collectivity. Thus one could speak of the hygiene of a nation, of a race in the narrower sense, or of the entire human race. In the further course of the book I will constantly, unless explicitly noted otherwise, apply the term racial hygiene in the general sense that corresponds to my use of the word race.

I know not whether the term racial hygiene has ever been uttered before; it is certain however that the concept contained in it has lived for the longest time in many heads, and that it plays a great role in the spiritual battles of our days.

When in old Sparta the law ordained that newborn children should be dipped in cold mountain water and the feeblest among them exposed on the desolate heights of Taygetos, it did harm individuals, but it brought an intended benefit to the collectivity. The same idea guided Lycurgus and the other collaborators on the Spartan constitution in the ordering of many other human relationships as well. According to Plutarch, Lycurgus was a very conscious racial hygienist who also clearly recognized the importance of procreation for his purposes. In his biographies Plutarch reports the following: “In education, which he considered the greatest and most important business of a lawgiver, he started completely from the beginning and directed his attention first of all to marriages and the creation of children.... First he sought to harden the bodies of the girls through running, wrestling, and throwing the discus and spears, wherewith the fruit generated in a powerful body could germinate and prosper mightily; she herself however might achieve the necessary powers for birth and withstand the pains easily and without danger. In order however to weed out all softness, and other feminine qualities, he accustomed the girls as well as the boys to attend the festive events nude, and to dance and sing thus both at certain festivals in the present and before the eyes of the youths.... ”

What this constitution, or at least one similar to it, had achieved, was proven three and one-half centuries later by Leonidas and his band in the bottleneck at Thermopylae.

The idea of racial refinement lay also at least partly at the base of the custom of the ancient Germans, to allow the father to kill feeble, ugly, or otherwise displeasing newborns. Also the Germanic Freien and Edelfreien, like the castes of of many other peoples and ages, often understood very well how to safeguard the racial interests of their body, or at least tried.

Nowadays among the cultural nations the understanding and the care of racial interests is limited on the one hand to the ruling princely houses and the nobility, on the other hand to racehorses, hunting dogs, neat cattle, and other domestic animals.

Christianity and modern democracy with their doctrine and demands of equality have so diminished the sense of race in the masses that the conflict between the humanitarian socialist demands and racial wellbeing indeed no longer penetrates their consciousness. In the masses, I say.

In the small circle of leaders and researchers, through the advent of Darwin and the political advance of Social Democracy, the racial interest has become very vital again, and the sword-blows of great and small knights of the mind rattle merrily through the springtime air of modern science. Here socialism, here Darwinism: behind these battle-cries are concealed nothing further than individual hygiene applied to politics, which would create for each individual the most favorable possible conditions for development of the individual, and racial hygiene, which believes that it cannot forego the elimination of feeble and bad individuals for the wellbeing of the race.

Many researchers indeed have laid the emphasis in the definition of Hygiene on the wellbeing of the collectivity, as for example Professor Demme, the Berne pediatrician, in the following words: “Hygiene gathers as in a focus the collected results of scientific medical research, so far as they can find application for the wellbeing of the state and the people.” But he has become no more conscious of the conflict.

Others, again, have denied the conflict. So says Georg in his Soziale Hygiene: “Meanwhile there has been no lack of serious opponents to the newly aspiring science. First there are the orthodox Darwinians, who are not favorably disposed toward social hygiene. They reproach the foiling of natural selection, which (they say) allows the elements weak in vitality to perish in the struggle for existence, and would guarantee a strong stock.... Hereupon one responds, completely apart from the humanitarian side of the matter, that social hygiene affords no less protection to the strong and healthy than to the feeble and sick.” [Ploetz could have pointed out here that within a civilized society natural selection has already been foiled.]

Even Rosenthal and Rubner express themselves in a similar way.

It is apparent that with this denial of the conflict nothing is accomplished. The strong and healthy do not even need the protection of [individual] hygiene, at least not in the same degree as the feeble, and are only more frequently exposed to mixture with the feeble [as a result].

Even the argument that the average lifespan has increased significantly since the promulgation of hygienic measures, and that the whole race thus has not only suffered no harm, but has benefited, may not be accepted without something further. Lifespan is the result of two conflicting components, the strength of the constitution of the individuals, and sum of the harmful influences on it. The result, the lifespan, can increase because of a decrease of harmful influences, while the constitutional strength increases or at least remains constant, or while it decreases, as long as this decrease in constitutional strength is not enough to offset the decrease in harmful influences.

In other words: an earthen jar can last longer than an iron jar if it is exposed to less frequent and less severe blows than the iron jar. That we really have lost some of the iron from our constitutional strength, even Rosenthal and Georg admit, but so has a multitude of the most eminent researchers, although others disagree.

The authorization for the confrontation between individual and racial hygiene thus continues to exist, and now arises the question of which of the two we have to regard on principle as dominant.

The first standard for all human activity is the maintenance of healthy, strong, flourishing life. This standard proceeds as much from the objective consideration of man as a self-maintaining attracting and repelling mechanism, as from the fundamental motives of the instinct-world, the survival-instincts, the dissatisfaction of which becomes directly apparent to our psyche as reluctance, and the satisfaction as desire. Let one look up something about this in Hauptmann’s Metaphysik in der modernen Physiologie, one of the sagest and most significant works that has appeared recently on the borderland of physiology and philosophy.

Individual hygiene also has proceeded from the survival-instincts of the individual and constructs its most refined and deepened expressions from it. As a child chiefly of the past few decades, individual hygiene has been infected a bit with the fin de siècle attitude: after us, the deluge. The effect that these quick benefits might have on the wellbeing of later generations was not of much concern.

Racial hygiene pertains precisely to the later generations, which here in relation to the descendants corresponds to the principle of individual hygiene, to desire the greatest wellbeing for the greatest number. The concept race pertains not to one generation but to many in succession, whose becoming and perishing constitute the life of the race.

Hence for each generation the immediate goal of racial hygiene is always the wellbeing of the next. Therefore the roots of racial hygiene are found in the instinct-world of individuals. Those are the instincts of parental love and concern for the great community to which one belongs, be it family, tribe, folk, or all mankind; thus even patriotism and the love of humanity, which mostly is nothing further than the love for its Aryan portion.

The parents who seek to beget and to raise their children under the most favorable possible conditions. The nobleman who approaches the choice of his wife according to the survival-interests of his stock. The patriot who with self-denial undertakes sacrifices that are necessary for the prosperity of his people also in a more distant time. The philanthropist who dreams of a golden age where a better, more fortunate generation flourishes. And the artist who would like to see human beauty not only in marble and canvas but much more lordly in flesh and blood. They all have a sense for the future of the race and are ready to make sacrifices for it in the present. They live, as Nietzsche says, more for the Childrenland than for the Fatherland.

All these motives constitute mental survival-adaptations for the type, but they also determine individual experiences of desire and revulsion; the proficiency of posterity is the goal.

Opinions vary greatly about the content of human happiness. It would be trivial to argue about it at length. But agreement might indeed prevail on the point that there is a foundation of shared necessary conditions for the happiness of all, such as health, physical and mental strength, entitlement to a certain minimum of economic goods, etc., and that there are in addition a series of desirable conditions, the realization of which is not really absolutely necessary for the enduring welfare of everyone, but is experienced as a very desirable bonus, as for example beautiful bodily forms, a handsome dwelling, a fine garden, artworks, etc. And here a decisive impulse sets in. The elevation of the inner conditions of happiness lying in our qualities, thus the perfection of humanity, is only in a very limited way a challenge relating to the life of the individual. External imprints, upbringing, practice of functions can only develop given talents to a certain point so that they function better for the individual in question, but the elevation of the good talents in the heredity of the next generation, thus the increase of the capital of human proficiency, is a problem of the life of the type and therefore falls completely within the sphere of racial hygiene.

Perfection must still for reasons apart from the mere maintenance of the race remain the object of racial hygiene, not only because the ways to mere maintenance pass over imperceptibly into those of perfection, but also because with all racial hygienic measures the achievement of mere maintenance, given the uncertainty of our methods, would be reached with certainty only if we strive for perfection.

The escalation of our brain-talents is the most necessary condition that we know for an improvement of our conditions of happiness. All progress in this means better discernment and thereby better governance of our own and of external nature. A tool and a weapon for that is our brain. Only an escalation of its talents from generation to generation can grant the necessary strength to humanity to wrest itself from the enfolding arms of misery.

Racial hygiene, the striving to keep the race healthy and to perfect its talents, must remain as the ruling principle, and individual hygiene along with its social and political expressions must be subordinated as soon as it seriously endangers this principle.

http://national-socialist-worldview.blogspot.com/2008/12/alfred-ploetz-introduces-term-racial.html

[Han Cholo]

Modern life is what creates sub-humans. Keeps sick people alive, allows non-fit people to reproduce, breeds people to be obedient and non-questioning. When civilization crashes down, we will see a massive natural selection.

[Felix Volkbein]

Here is Richard Lynn's book review of Raymond Cattell's A New Morality from Science: Beyondism. Cattell was one of the most important psychologists of the twentieth century, and a pioneer in factor analysis and culturally neutral IQ tests. Lynn has named Cattell as one of the formative influences on his own thought on racial differences in intelligence.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/09/16/article-1312395-0B35E813000005DC-772_233x220.jpg
Richard Lynn

http://www.cattell.net/devon/rbc50.jpg
Raymond Cattell

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Richard Lynn, "Review: A New Morality from Science: Beyondism." by R.B. Cattell. Pergamon Press, New York, 1972. Pages xvii and 482. Irish Journal of Psychology 2 #3 (Winter 1974).

A new book by Professor Cattell is always an exciting occasion, for his is certainly one of the most brilliant of contemporary psychologists. Before he was thirty he had devised the culture-free intelligence test and worked out a statistical technique for measuring the decline of the British national intelligence. Later he formulated the double g theory of fluid and crystallised intelligence and designed the world famous 16PF. And now we have his latest work: Beyondism. (205/6)

Beyondism! Whatever is it? It is a new system of ethics designed to bring about the improvement of the human species. We need a new system of ethics, Cattell begins by telling us, because the old ethics based on religion is so clearly breaking down throughout the world. The new ethics of Beyondism is based not on religion but on science. Its objective is the improvement of the human beings and society: a better world. The means of brining about this lie in the application of Darwin's law of evolution. (206)

People who considered the problem of how the world can be improved fall into one or other of two camps. On the one hand, there are those who believe it is possible to draw up a blueprint of the ideal society. Everything is to be planned. This is the vision of socialism. The alternative approach is that of conservatism. To the conservative, we are not able to tell what an improved society of the future would be like, any more than our primate ancestors could imagine human society, or mediaeval man the advances societies of today. In the fact of our limited powers of foresight and understanding, and the unknown discoveries which will be made in the fullness of time, the best course is to let a better society evolve gradually of its own accord.

Of these two approaches, Cattell places himself squarely in the conservative camp. The problem, posed from he viewpoint of the conservation tradition, is not to sit down and plan a specification for Utopia, but to set up the conditions under which further evolutionary progress will occur. For this we need to go back to Darwin, for he gave us the master theory of the principles of evolution, applicable not only to the development of different species in the past but also to the future progress of mankind.

Now evolution takes place where there is a variety of different types who compete against one another, and in this competition the fittest survive and the unfit become extinct. This, therefore, should be the first principle in the design of human society. The requirement of diverse competing types applies both to societies and to individuals. Among societies the unit should be the nation and there should be the widest variety of different cultures. Some will be capitalist, some socialist, and some mixed economies. Some will be democracies, others oligarchies, and yet other dictatorships. They will have different religions, or none; and they will have different kinds and distributions of intelligence and personality qualities. The nations will compete, and in the competitive struggle the fittest will survive. (207)

If the evolutionary process is to bring its benefits, it has to be allowed to operate effectively. This means that incompetent societies have to be allowed to go to the wall. This is something we in advanced societies do not at present face up to and the reason for this, according to Cattell, is that we have become too soft-hearted. For instance, the foreign aid which we give to the under-developed world is a mistake, akin to keeping going incompetent species like the dinosaurs which are not fit for the competitive struggle for existence. What is called for here is not genocide, the killing off of the populations of incompetent cultures. But we do need to think realistically in terms of "phasing out" of such peoples. If the world is to evolve more better humans, then obviously someone has to make way for them otherwise we shall all be overcrowded. After all, ninety-eight per cent of the of the species known to zoologists are extinct. Evolutionary progress means the extinction of the less competent. To think otherwise is mere sentimentality.

As a general rule it would be best for national cultures to keep themselves to themselves and not to admit immigrants. There are several reasons for this. Isolation would give rise to societies with greater diversity and individuality, both culturally and genetically. Indeed, it would be desirable if the human race could evolve several different non-interbreeding species, since this would increase the options for evolution to work on. Another reason for discouraging migration is that migrants are often people of low genetic quality who reduce the efficiency of the population they join.

The first principle for evolutionary progress is therefore competition between diverse cultures. but we have to think also of the principles conducive to the efficiency of individual nations especially that of our own if we wish to be among the survivors.

It is of course necessary to improve the society by better education, health and so forth. Everyone agrees with that. But it is equally important to improve the genetic quality of society. Cattell maintains that in order to do this we need to encourage the intelligent people to have more children and the unintelligent to have fewer. And here, as in international relationships, the altruistic impulses have become unhealthily strong in advanced western societies. For just as in certain people the aggressive impulses, or the sexual impulses, can get out of hand, the same thing can occur with the altruistic impulses and has in fact occurred in advanced western societies. For example, we are too altruistic towards the poor. People are poor largely because they are incompetent and unintelligent. Such people should not be encouraged to breed. Conversely, we are too harsh to the rich. Progressive taxation, for example, is hard to justify. Why should the rich have to contribute more than anyone else through taxation to the maintenance of state services, since they do not benefit more from them? Morally, this cannot be justified. Eugenically, it is equally undesirable. For the rich are rich, broadly speaking, because they are intelligent and competent and we should encourage them to have more children. Let them keep their money and they may be persuaded to do so. We should allow the effects of competition full reign within societies as well as between societies. For it is through competition that evolutionary progress will take place.

Tough speaking, you man say. No doubt, but then Cattell is saying that this is a tough world. It is the law of evolution which is tough, and you cannot fight against the laws of nature. You have instead to work with them, working with the grain and not against it. Ignoring the laws of nature brings its own nemesis. Thus a society which has grown too soft towards its incompetents, encouraging them to multiply unduly, and places too great handicaps on its more efficient and enterprising, will itself become an incompetent society and will in time fall victim to a more vigorous nation. Moral defects within societies are thereby corrected in the competitive struggle between societies. The law of evolution cannot be fought or circumvented. We can ignore it, at our peril, or we can recognize it and work with it. But if all this -- nature red in tooth and claw -- seems harsh, we have to remember that this is the mechanism through which evolutionary progress takes place, through which man himself has evolved from more primitive forms of life, and through which future progress will occur.

And so for Cattell the basic principles for a scientific ethics are these: diverse societies and types; competition between societies and between individuals; survival of the fittest, extinction of the unfit. This is the way to a better world. How different from most prescriptions for Utopia, with their socialistic world states in which competition is extinguished and all men work together in a spirit of co-operation, brotherly love and, no doubt, boredom. And how different is Raymond Cattell today from the young Raymond Cattell who in the nineteen thirties, in his Fight for the National Intelligence, described himself as a Socialist. Over the last forty years Cattell has evidently travelled (sic!) the long road from radical Socialist to high Tory. He is not the first to have done so. Those who share this latter viewpoint will welcome a recruit of such undoubted brilliance as Raymond Cattell.

http://www.ferris.edu/isar/bios/cattell/lynn.htm

[Felix Volkbein]

The Aryanism website has been kind enough to make Raymond Cattell's Beyondism available in its entirety for free:

http://aryanism.net/downloads/books/raymond-cattell/new-morality-from-science-beyondism.pdf

Here is some more information on Cattell's philosophy, which I find fascinating:

"...the Atlantic democracies are bewildered, envious, and hostile at the rise of Germany, Italy, and Japan, countries in which individuals have disciplined their indulgences as to a religious purpose. These nationals fear the gods even though they are partly false gods, in comparison with the vast numbers in our democracies lacking any super-personal aim. Their rise should be welcomed by the religious man as reassuring evidence that in spite of modern wealth and ease, we shall not be allowed to sink into stagnation or adopt foolish social practices in fatal detachment from the stream of evolution." (Cattell, 1938, p. 149)

An exemplary career in psychology

Raymond B. Cattell is a world-renowned psychologist known primarily for his work in IQ and personality testing. At ninety-two years old, he is the author of some 41 books and 450 research articles. Along with a large number of students and collaborators, he has developed many of the standardized tests of personality and ability in use today. Over six decades after the beginning of his career, he continues to be one of the most frequently cited psychologists in the academic literature. His technical innovations have been formulated within the context of a broader, largely unchanging worldview that is expressed in an important stream of publications dating from the 1930s. He has been the recipient of numerous prestigious academic awards including the Darwin Fellowship, the Wenner-Gren Prize of the New York Academy of Science, the Psychometric Award of APA/Educational Testing Service, and the Dobzhansky Award for lifetime achievement of the Behavior Genetics Society. In 1997, he was chosen to receive psychology's highest honor, the Gold Medal Award for Lifetime Achievement, from the American Psychology Foundation. This final honor was withheld after the material in this article came to public notice.(1) Cattell is the founder of the Society for Multivariate Experimental Psychology (SMEP); the Cattell Institute, and The Trust for the Advancement of Beyondism. Each year the American Educational Research Association honors one its members with the Raymond B. Cattell Award, and SMEP bestows the Cattell Award for Distinguished Multivariate Behavioral Research. In sum, he is among the most influential psychologists of the twentieth century.

Beyondism: a new religious movement

Through the whole course of his career, Cattell has promulgated a new religious movement, a distinctive reformulation of the theological elements of classical Galtonian eugenics. Galton conceived eugenics as both a science and the foundation for a civic religion that he hoped would replace Christianity and "provide a secular substitute for traditional religion" (Kevles, 1985, especially pp. 3-20; p. 68).

The basic elements of this worldview are fully developed in Cattell's first published works (Cattell, 1933; Bramwell, 1933; Cattell, 1938). He subsequently named his movement 'Beyondism' to emphasize its transcendental character (the first reference to the term is found in Cattell, 1950, pp. 21-27). He has devoted two major books to the subject, A New Morality from Science: Beyondism (Cattell, 1972) and Beyondism: Religion from Science (Cattell, 1987); established The Trust for the Advancement of Beyondism and a journal, The Beyondist to further promulgate his theology.

Cattell begins with a critique of Christianity, which he views as the denial of the 'urge to evolution' encouraging 'the increase of the unfit,' and thus the destruction of western civilization (Cattell, 1937, p. 131). Beyondism, by contrast, purports to be a rational religion based on evolutionary theory which says the fittest should inherit the earth. Any soft-hearted amelioration of the struggle for existence can only lead to the survival of the unfit and the demise of civilization. Rather than wasting time and money helping the unfit, it would be far better to give them "a merciful little push over the cliffs of perdition" (Bannister, 1979, p. 178). While the eugenics movement has been studied from many different perspectives and much attention has been placed on eugenics as an outgrowth of genetics and psychology, there has been little serious work on the religious component to the eugenics movement and almost no mention of Beyondism. This is extremely unfortunate. The history of 'evolutionary ethics' has yet to be written while the history of the other facets of eugenics have been largely overwritten.

Cattell first outlined his 'evolutionary ethic' based on natural selection in Psychology and Social Progress (1933). Expressing ideas that were commonplace among intellectuals of the 1930s, he argued that poverty and disease were part of the natural selection process which kept a race healthy. Modern social welfare and private charity "abolished the checks" natural selection imposed on biological systems. Instilling the discipline of evolutionary ethics into the population was essential for the health of the state. This is still Cattell’s basic argument. 'Every national calamity is in truth a reward of sin, though unfortunately only the scientist, and not the Church supposed to govern the public conscience, is clearly aware of this conception of sin' (Cattell, 1933, p. 149). The calamities of 'war, famine, or other acute evils' in which the lives of millions are sometimes lost often arise from "people of conscience following fundamentally false ethics" (Cattell, 1933, p. 149).

According to Cattell, the salvation of Western society was to be found in bringing social ethics into conformity with the demands of reality by stigmatizing ignorance, lack of foresight, intellectual insincerity, mental defect, and carelessness (Cattell, 1933). Cattell called for three major modifications in social mores and law: (1) The prohibition of miscegenation; (2) increasing the distance between people of dissimilar race; (3) promoting competition and eugenic selection (Cattell, 1933, p. 151).

While Cattell's Beyondist ideology is hardly original, it is striking for its extremism, racism, and virulent bias against the poor. It is extremist both in its empirical claims and in its policy recommendations. Cattell believes that people are poor largely because they are incompetent and unintelligent. Furthermore, human intelligence is declining precipitously and only extreme measures will save humanity. According to Cattell, society faces the 'looming threat' of being swamped by incompetents. Fortunately, eugenics provides a humane way of promoting progressive evolution 'without allowing many short and miserable lives to be sacrificed.' What is demanded is 'an educated control of reproduction, especially in the lower social classes' - those 'with IQs in the 70 to 100 range,' who 'have no conception that sexual control is part of citizenship' (The Beyondist, 1994, p. 1).

Translated into policy Beyondists recommend that First World countries allow Third World countries 'to go to the wall' when they collapse into chaos, mass famine, and genocide. Foreign aid to under-developed third-world countries is a mistake. Incompetent and obsolete societies are not fit for the competitive struggle for existence. "What is called for here is not genocide, the killing off of the populations of incompetent cultures. But we do need to think realistically in terms of 'phasing out of such peoples'" (Cattell, 1972, p. 221; Lynn, 1974, p. 207).

In order to make room for "better humans" the obsolete and incompetent must "make way... Evolutionary progress means the extinction of the less competent. To think otherwise is mere sentimentality" (Lynn, 1974, p. 207). This means that nations must compete in a fierce struggle for survival of the fittest. Racial and ethnic groups must preserve their purity. Immigration must be stopped. Isolation will "give rise to societies with greater diversity and individuality, both culturally and genetically. Indeed, it would be desirable if the human race could evolve several different non-interbreeding species, since this would increase the options for evolution to work on." Furthermore, immigration usually ends up encouraging "people of low genetic quality" who simply burden the genetically fit. We need to stop coddling the poor (Lynn, 1974, p. 207).

Cattell's ethic involves engineering an evolutionary jump to a new larger brained human. From Cattell's perspective the vast majority of humans on the planet are 'obsolete.' He can sympathize with the desire to save rare animals, including various primitive human groups, but the earth will be "choked with the more primitive forerunners" unless a way is found to eliminate them. "Unfortunately, wherever a question of relative reduction of a population is concerned the word 'genocide' is ... bandied about as a propaganda term. ... Clarity of discussion ... would be greatly aided if genocide were reserved for a literal killing off of all living members of a people, as in several instances in the Old Testament, and genthanasia for what has been above called 'phasing out,' in which a moribund culture is ended, by educational and birth control measures... " (Cattell, 1972, p. 220).

It should be noted that Cattell's definition of genocide exonerates the Nazis who did not "kill off all living members of a people," and leaves only the Jews as perpetrators of the crime. Cattell is left calling for "genthanasia," a humane form of genocide, essential to the elimination of "moribund" cultures. :thumb001:

The London School

Raymond B. Cattell was one of the fathers of the "London School" of psychology. Belief in the overriding importance of heredity is a major theme in the work of London School academics. This was more an article of faith than a hypothesis to be tested. Thus Cyril Burt, in one of his earliest published papers in Eugenics Review in 1912, declared that "the fact of mental inheritance ... can no longer be contested, and its importance can scarcely be over-estimated" (Burt, 1912, p. 183).

Galton established the institutional base for the London School by establishing the Chair of Eugenics at the University of London’s Galton Laboratory and appointing his disciple, Karl Pearson to the position. Pearson was succeeded by Charles Spearman and Cyril Burt - both mentors of Cattell. Together with R.A. Fisher, these men formed the intellectual foundation of the London School. These men would dominate the field of psychology in England and America for the next several decades. J. Philippe Rushton’s latest monograph, Race, Evolution, and Behavior (Rushton, 1995) opens with a quote from Francis Galton and acknowledgment that "This work belongs in the ‘London School’ tradition founded by Sir Francis Galton." Rushton defines the London School tradition as a "unique amalgam of evolutionary biology, behavioral genetics, psychometrics, and neuroscience" (Rushton, 1995, p. xvii).

General Intelligence and Eugenics

In The Fight for Our National Intelligence, Cattell summarized the scientific principles that formed the foundation of the London School's determinist views (Cattell, 1937a). A key element of this approach was Charles Spearman's concept of "g" or "general intelligence." For Spearman's essay on general intelligence see, Spearman (1904). For a discussion of the importance of this concept in the history of eugenics see, McGuire and Hirsch (1977, pp. 25-72). Spearman obtained four measures of intelligence and postulated that there must be a general factor common to the various measures. He called this "general intelligence" or g.

Spearman recognized the importance of "g" to the future of eugenics. The "eugenicist would be seriously hindered" if intelligence was composed of numerous independent factors, the "efforts to better the race" would be "dissipated in hunting after innumerable independent abilities" (Spearman, 1914, pp. 220-21). According to Cattell "the great majority of psychologists," were convinced that the "g" factor was "largely inborn and constitutional, like the colour of the person's eyes or the shape of his skull." Environment has little effect on intelligence. Identical twins reared apart have practically identical IQ scores and the feeble minded remain feeble-minded "whatever influences of environment," mental stimulation, or nutrition are brought to bear. Furthermore, "intelligence tests point to significant differences between races" - a dangerous doctrine - "to be covered at once by a fog of casuistry" (Cattell, 1937a, p. 24-27).

While our understanding of heredity might be rough and empirical, Cattell argued that it was time to act. "We are all grateful... that Francis Drake did not defer to using cannon against the Armada on the grounds that there then existed only 'a rough empirical knowledge' of gunpowder or that Jenner did not defer attacking the scourge of small-pox because the physiology of vaccine was not then fully understood." "We must distinguish between the laboratory... and the adventure of living in which the wise man is he who can discern and act upon a strong probability. The affairs of the nation are in the second category and the happiness of each one us depends upon those in control being wise enough to encourage scientific research and apply it at the first opportunity" (Cattell, 1937a, p. 38).

Cattell's Association with Nazi Race Science

Cattell openly supported fascism in the 1930s. While British eugenists of the 1930s were often critical of Nazi eugenics and especially of Nazi race science, Raymond Cattell was generally an enthusiastic supporter. As William Tucker points out, Cattell gave "due acknowledgment, not only to Günther, but even to Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau." Günther was one of the leaders of the Nordicist school of racial philosophy in Nazi Germany. His works, like Rassenkunde des Deutschen Volkes were deeply racist and anti-Semitic and he was a regular contributor to Nazi party magazines. Günther "was widely read in Nazi Germany and was much admired by leading Nazi politicians such as Alfred Rosenberg, who in 1941 formally honored Günther with the Goethe medal (Tucker, 1994, p. 239; Searchlight, 1984, p. 3).

Cattell blithely speaks of German colonial policy as the "annihilation ... of backward and obstreperous savages" by machine gun which he contrasted favorably with the less effective, but still useful, British method of destruction of primitive tribes by "lethal ideas." The South Sea islanders, for example, were decimated by "being taught the habits of Western civilization, habits destructive of their own well-adapted culture on which their living, marrying and reproduction depended." "It is possible," Cattell argued, "to kill off a class of people in a wholesale fashion by means of an idea" and "it would be a very important piece of work by social psychologists... to study lethal ideas, especially with a view to decreasing the number of sub-cultural persons." Cattell believed that the "lower sub-cultural" types would probably have to be sterilized, but the "very numerous group of low-average middle class" could probably be "led by the nose by opportunities of leisure and diversion to forget the satisfactions of family life..." (Cattell, 1937a, p. 137-138).

Cattell’s critical remarks about Hitler in later years trivialize the horrors of the past and the dangers inherent in fascist ideology. In Cattell (1972, p. 406), for example, he compares Hitler to "the murderous Hippie cults of California." Between 1933 and 1938, the world witnessed an orchestrated anti-Semitic campaign of unprecedented ferocity; the ousting of Jewish students from German schools; laws denying Jews the right to serve in the army or civil service; Kristallnacht, and the first concentration camps. No one in England during these years could be oblivious to these events. Atrocities committed by the Japanese in China and the Italians in Ethiopia were also well publicized. Despite this, Cattell could write in 1938 that the "envy" and "hostility" of the "Atlantic Democracies" over "the rise of Germany, Italy, and Japan," was uncalled-for. Citizens in these fascist states had "disciplined their indulgences" and focused their energies on "a religious purpose." The rise of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany "should be welcomed by the religious man as reassuring evidence that in spite of modern wealth and ease, we shall not be allowed to sink into stagnation or adopt foolish social practices in fatal detachment from the stream of evolution" (Cattell, 1938, p. 149). After five decades of reflection, Cattell has concluded that the legacy of this catastrophe has been a mental "disorder" he calls "ignoracism" - the inability "to consider the scientific possibility that races may show statistically significant differences" (Cattell, 1972, p. 262). In other words, the Nazis created such a revulsion to racism that it resulted in "ignoracism" - the refusal to accept the reality of racial differences!

http://www.ferris.edu/isar/bios/cattell/genetica.htm (WARNING: Hit piece written by anti-racist scum)

[Hexachordia]

Who created communist economy, Adam Smith, who bribed the world communists, american government. Which government is the assembly of human splinters, americaan government. Free economy is the most primitive stage of communism, communism is the ideology of the priviledged elites superimposing upon a fake democracy for the stupid mass. The communist breed the human mass for use, and they pretend to be prunner of humanity. Communist and nationalist have different values on human individuals, their engenicisms go in different directions, the worthy ones in nationalism are the unworthy ones for communism, vice versa. Nationalists must beware of the lies.

[Hexachordia]

Communist and nationalist have different values on human individuals, their engenicisms go in different directions, the worthy ones in nationalism are the unworthy ones for communism, vice versa. Nationalists must beware of the lies.

However, to adopt the harsh measure the communists use against nationalism is necessary, nationalists must be as cruel and reckless as the communists in the struggle.

[Hexachordia]

Peoples appear and vanish, some into nothing, like the Goths, others into insignificant mediocrity, like the Greeks. It was not always the worst that thus declined. The Goths, like the Greeks, had many excellent qualities; they were peoples of heroic temperament, and indeed they dwindled or withered away under influences to which they were not entirely adapted. Even today on our own border we see a people puzzlingly ill. The French as a race have stagnated; indeed they are declining in spite of the materially favorable conditions under which they live, and only the new generation of foreign immigrants upholds the French name -- but not the French race.

Peoples and races are just organic life-forms, determined like beasts and plants through their component parts – cells here, men there – for which their environment is a complex of favorable or unfavorable conditions. And just as we have, by the combination of favorable conditions, created a hygiene for man, which, based ultimately on the life of his cells, teaches him how he may maintain health as long as possible and postpone death, so is it high time, based on the vital functions of men, to attempt the founding of a hygiene of the races and of all mankind, which teaches how an organic collectivity of men may keep itself as vigorous as possible and postpone its perishing as long as possible.

The word race is used among men in various ways. Thus one speaks simply of the human race and means thereby the totality of mankind. One also needs that word however for the subdivisions into which the species Homo sapiens has been divided; one speaks for example of the Caucasian and the Mongoloid race. But one also needs this word for further classifications, such as for the Germans, Romans, etc. Furthermore it is convenient for the designation of contemporary racial mixtures that only appear as unities because of a shared language or political administration, as in the case of the French race, the British race, etc.

Apart from a brief discussion of the biological races in relation to their cultural value, I will use the word simply to designate a human collectivity existing through generations, in regard to its physical and mental qualities. This is all the more feasible since collective explanations up to the ones mentioned in the previous sentence are just as valid for small as for large communities of humans, for races in the zoological sense just as well as for mixed races and modern states. [...]

At first glance one could suppose that the conditions for the prosperity of a race were the same as the conditions for the prosperity of every single member of it, that racial hygiene and the customary hygiene of the individual were one and the same. This is not the case however without something further, and there are excellent researchers who even want to acknowledge a deep conflict between modern hygiene and racial well-being.

European racialism is profoundly misled by hypocritic understanding of humanity, that is the human-centrism. If you put human as something superior, your racial ideology will go against asian nationalism. Asian nationalism is something very opaque but it is really existent and real. Humanity is not superior in anyway.

Therefore, the passing of a race is necessary. Races which resist against the rule of death will inevitably corrupt. This is why the jewish and han chinese races had been fall victim to their own stupidity. A great portion of them must be exterminated because they evaded the law of disappearance by intrigues. Han chinese should had been exterminated by mongols, like other ethnic asians, but han people cooperated with the mongols and spared, they evaded their struggle therefore, they never got freed from mongol mentality which is the one important feature of modern communism. Racial preservation is basically WRONG!

Ayn race escaped the law of nature will fall into the trap of communism, and will forever be used, exploited by communists, it is an eternal hell. To rescue the people, is to extinguish their physical existence, or they will be subjected to torture of their own inferior scientific tools. IQ is a BIG LIE.

To save your people, is to make them observe the law of passing of the races. By passing under the law of nature, we can reunited with the ancient gods, saved from human-centrist stupidity, exhibited in all forms under communism.

Races must die, this is the holy law. This is the very basis of racial eugenicism, and the birth of optimum race is only founded upon the introduction of the new culture after the passing of the races.

[Hexachordia]

Hitler got it right when he decided to exterminate all german people after the defeat, it was when he attained the highest philosophy of nationalism, it is core value of German Nazism. The true nationalism is to guard the law of nature, and this law is not competition of IQ, :picard1: But the law of natural struggle, to free yourself from the yoke of stupidity. Sadly, the world has come to a stage that massive extermination is necessary, but it should not be directed under the communists, even the communists understand this necessity!!!The communists led the humanity into corruption in need of extermination and now they will excute the extermination themself, the worst thing is, the worst specimen of humanity will be preserved, which should be exterminated under nationalism as a priority. We are fuckt, we are hopeless.

[Melina]

Modern life is what creates sub-humans. Keeps sick people alive, allows non-fit people to reproduce, breeds people to be obedient and non-questioning. When civilization crashes down, we will see a massive natural selection.

Agreed, now people who shouldn't be alive are still kept alive. I also believe the media is destroying the population physically and mentally. If you look at the new series coming out it is promoting cannibalism and uncontrollable lust.It promotes no self control. Now the government can control a dumbing down population through drugs, sex and fear.

[Hexachordia]

Cattell’s critical remarks about Hitler in later years trivialize the horrors of the past and the dangers inherent in fascist ideology. In Cattell (1972, p. 406), for example, he compares Hitler to "the murderous Hippie cults of California." Between 1933 and 1938, the world witnessed an orchestrated anti-Semitic campaign of unprecedented ferocity; the ousting of Jewish students from German schools; laws denying Jews the right to serve in the army or civil service; Kristallnacht, and the first concentration camps. No one in England during these years could be oblivious to these events. Atrocities committed by the Japanese in China and the Italians in Ethiopia were also well publicized. Despite this, Cattell could write in 1938 that the "envy" and "hostility" of the "Atlantic Democracies" over "the rise of Germany, Italy, and Japan," was uncalled-for. Citizens in these fascist states had "disciplined their indulgences" and focused their energies on "a religious purpose." The rise of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany "should be welcomed by the religious man as reassuring evidence that in spite of modern wealth and ease, we shall not be allowed to sink into stagnation or adopt foolish social practices in fatal detachment from the stream of evolution" (Cattell, 1938, p. 149). After five decades of reflection, Cattell has concluded that the legacy of this catastrophe has been a mental "disorder" he calls "ignoracism" - the inability "to consider the scientific possibility that races may show statistically significant differences" (Cattell, 1972, p. 262). In other words, the Nazis created such a revulsion to racism that it resulted in "ignoracism" - the refusal to accept the reality of racial differences!

Mr Cattel got it reversed that there is a competition under modern society, there is no competition under communism, just reverse evolution. Western racialism based on IQ and fortune got the upper hand now they want to deal with their own aftermath with copycat nazi ideology. Yet communist massacre of the natives is nothing worse than their assimilation, which wise native people in north/southamerica still resist, even the savages understand the futility of the fake glory. Communist racialism will only result in further futile violence amongs their own subjects, like modern India, use elaborate
repackaging of existent ideologies and material baits to lure the mass into the struggle of self-preservation, fighting for the gain of upper communists and decimating within their own. This is the ultimate communism, faces off culminating with stupidest mass mentality, endless mass violence.

People do not really forgets the real face of communism, the greater struggle is still ahead.

[Hexachordia]

How to clear your mind :

Do not embrace the brotherhood to corrupt brethren.

Do not embrace any hope offered by a mass supported government, the fake democracy.

[Taiguaitiaoghyrmmumin]

This makes no sense. Racial preservation in the name of Eugenics? So if a aryan has parkinson disease will he be killed? What if a wog of any color isn't a carrier for any inherited diseases, should he be killed?

[Felix Volkbein]

This makes no sense. Racial preservation in the name of Eugenics? So if a aryan has parkinson disease will he be killed? What if a wog of any color isn't a carrier for any inherited diseases, should he be killed?

Is that directed to the OP or to Hexachordia?

[Felix Volkbein]

This is the chapter "THE COMPARATIVE WORTH OF DIFFERENT RACES" from Francis Galton's Hereditary Genius:

http://galton.org/photos/aged73-thumb.GIF

Every long-established race has necessarily its peculiar fitness for the conditions under which it has lived, owing to the sure operation of Darwin's law of natural selection. However, I am not much concerned, for the present, with the greater part of those aptitudes, but only with such as are available in some form or other of high civilization. We may reckon upon the advent of a time, when civilization, which is now sparse and feeble and far more superficial than it is vaunted to be, shall overspread the globe. Ultimately it is sure to do so, because civilization is the necessary fruit of high intelligence when found in a social animal, and there is no plainer lesson to be read off the face of Nature than that the result of the operation of her laws is to evoke intelligence in connexion with sociability. Intelligence is as much an advantage to an animal as physical strength or any other natural gift, and therefore, out of two varieties of any race of animal who are equally endowed in other respects, the most intelligent variety is sure to prevail in the battle of life. Similarly, among animals as intelligent as man, the most social race is sure to prevail, other qualities being equal.

Under even a very moderate form of material civilization, a vast number of aptitudes acquired through the "survivorship of the fittest" and the unsparing destruction of the unfit, for hundreds of generations, have become as obsolete as the old mail-coach habits and customs, since the establishment of railroads, and there is not the slightest use in attempting to preserve them; they are hindrances, and not gains, to civilization. I shall refer to some of these a little further on, but I will first speak of the qualities needed in civilized society. They are, speaking generally, such as will enable a race to supply a large contingent to the various groups of eminent men, of whom I have treated in my several chapters. Without going so far as to say that this very convenient test is perfectly fair, we are at all events justified in making considerable use of it, as I will do, in the estimates I am about to give.

In comparing the worth of different races, I shall make frequent use of the law of deviation from an average, to which I have already been much beholden; and, to save the reader's time and patience, I propose to act upon an assumption that would require a good deal of discussion to limit, and to which the reader may at first demur, but which cannot lead to any error of importance in a rough provisional inquiry. I shall assume that the intervals between the grades of ability are the same in all the races —that is, if the ability of class A of one race be equal to the ability of class C in another, then the ability of class B of the former shall be supposed equal to that of class D of the latter, and so on. I know this cannot be strictly true, for it would be in defiance of analogy if the variability of all races were precisely the same; but, on the other hand, there is good reason to expect that the error introduced by the assumption cannot sensibly affect the offhand results for which alone I propose to employ it; moreover, the rough data I shall adduce, will go far to show the justice of this expectation.

Let us, then, compare the negro race with the Anglo-Saxon, with respect to those qualities alone which are capable of producing judges, statesmen, commanders, men of literature and science, poets, artists, and divines. If the negro race in America had been affected by no social disabilities, a comparison of their achievements with those of the whites in their several branches of intellectual effort, having regard to the total number of their respective populations, would give the necessary information. As matters stand, we must be content with much rougher data.

First, the negro race has occasionally, but very rarely, produced such men as Toussaint l'Ouverture, who are of our class F; that is to say, its X, or its total classes above G, appear to correspond with our F, showing a difference of not less than two grades between the black and white races, and it may be more.

Secondly, the negro race is by no means wholly deficient in men capable of becoming good factors, thriving merchants, and otherwise considerably raised above the average of whites—that is to say, it can not unfrequently supply men corresponding to our class C, or even D. It will be recollected that C implies a selection of 1 in 16, or somewhat more than the natural abilities possessed by average foremen of common juries, and that D is as I in 64—a degree of ability that is sure to make a man successful in life. In short, classes E and F of the negro may roughly be considered as the equivalent of our C and D—a result which again points to the conclusion, that the average intellectual standard of the negro race is some two grades below our own.

Thirdly, we may compare, but with much caution, the relative position of negroes in their native country with that of the travellers who visit them. The latter, no doubt, bring with them the knowledge current in civilized lands, but that is an advantage of less importance than we are apt to suppose. A native chief has as good an education in the art of ruling men, as can be desired; he is continually exercised in personal government, and usually maintains his place by the ascendency of his character, shown every day over his subjects and rivals. A traveller in wild countries also fills, to a certain degree, the position of a commander, and has to confront native chiefs at every inhabited place. The result is familiar enough— the white traveller almost invariably holds his own in their presence. It is seldom that we hear of a white traveller meeting with a black chief whom he feels to be the better man. I have often discussed this subject with competent persons, and can only recall a few cases of the inferiority of the white man,—certainly not more than might be ascribed to an average actual difference of three grades, of which one may be due to the relative demerits of native education, and the remaining two to a difference in natural gifts.

Fourthly, the number among the negroes of those whom we should call half-witted men, is very large. Every book alluding to negro servants in America is full of instances. I was myself much impressed by this fact during my travels in Africa. The mistakes the negroes made in their own matters, were so childish, stupid, and simpleton-like, as frequently to make me ashamed of my own species, I do not think it any exaggeration to say, that their c is as low as our e, which would be a difference of two grades, as before. I have no information as to actual idiocy among the negroes—I mean, of course, of that class of idiocy which is not due to disease.

The Australian type is at least one grade below the African negro. I possess a few serviceable data about the natural capacity of the Australian, but not sufficient to induce me to invite the reader to consider them.

The average standard of the Lowland Scotch and the English North-country men is decidedly a fraction of a grade superior to that of the ordinary English, because the number of the former who attain to eminence is far greater than the proportionate number of their race would have led us to expect. The same superiority is distinctly shown by a comparison of the well-being of the masses of the population; for the Scotch labourer is much less of a drudge than the Englishman of the Midland counties—he does his work better, and "lives his life" besides. The peasant women of Northumberland work all day in the fields, and are not broken down by the work; on the contrary, they take a pride in their effective labour as girls, and, when married, they attend well to the comfort of their homes. It is perfectly distressing to me to witness the draggled, drudged, mean look of the mass of individuals, especially of the women, that one meets in the streets of London and other purely English towns. The conditions of their life seem too hard for their constitutions, and to be crushing them into degeneracy.

The ablest race of whom history bears record is unquestionably the ancient Greek, partly because their master-pieces in the principal departments of intellectual activity are still unsurpassed, and in many respects unequalled, and partly because the population that gave birth to the creators of those master-pieces was very small. Of the various Greek sub-races, that of Attica was the ablest, and she was no doubt largely indebted to the following cause, for her superiority. Athens opened her arms to immigrants, but not indiscriminately, for her social life was such that none but very able men could take any pleasure in it; on the other hand, she offered attractions such as men of the highest ability and culture could find in no other city. Thus, by a system of partly unconscious selection, she built up a magnificent breed of human animals, which, in the space of one century—viz. between 530 and 430 B.C.—produced the following illustrious persons, fourteen in number:—

Statesmen and Commanders.—Themistocles (mother an alien), Miltiades, Aristeides, Cimon (son of Miltiades), Pericles (son of Xanthippus, the victor at Mycalc).
Literary and Scientific Men.—Thucydides, Socrates, Xenophon, Plato.
Poets.— Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes.
Sculptor.—Phidias.

e are able to make a closely-approximate estimate of the population that produced these men, because the number of the inhabitants of Attica has been a matter of frequent inquiry, and critics appear at length to be quite agreed in the general results. It seems that the little district of Attica contained, during its most flourishing period (Smith's Class. Geog. Dict.), less than 90, 000 native free-born persons, 40, 000 resident aliens, and a labouring and artisan population of 400, 000 slaves. The first item is the only one that concerns us here, namely, the 90, 000 free-born persons. Again, the common estimate that population renews itself three times in a century is very close to the truth, and may be accepted in the present case. Consequently, we have to deal with a total population of 270, 000 free-born persons, or 135, 000 males, born in the century I have named. Of these, about one-half, or 67.500, would survive the age of 26, and one-third, or 45, 000, would survive that of 50. As 14 Athenians became illustrious, the selection is only as I to 4, 822 in respect to the former limitation, and as I to 3, 214 in respect to the latter. Referring to the table in page 34, it will be seen that this degree of selection corresponds very fairly to the classes F (1 in 4, 300) and above, of the Athenian race. Again, as G is one-sixteenth or one-seventeenth as numerous as F, it would be reasonable to expect to find one of class G among the fourteen; we might, however, by accident, meet with two, three, or even four of that class— say Pericles, Socrates, Plato, and Phidias.

Now let us attempt to compare the Athenian standard of ability with that of our own race and time. We have no men to put by the side of Socrates and Phidias, because the millions of all Europe, breeding as they have done for the subsequent 2, 000 years, have never produced their equals. They are, therefore, two or three grades above our G—they might rank as I or J. But, supposing we do not count them at all, saying that some freak of nature acting at that time, may have produced them, what must we say about the rest? Pericles and Plato would rank, I suppose, the one among the greatest of philosophical statesmen, and the other as at least the equal of Lord Bacon. They would, therefore, stand somewhere among our unclassed X, one or two grades above G—let us call them between H and I. All the remainder—the F of the Athenian race— would rank above our G, and equal to or close upon our H. It follows from all this, that the average ability of the Athenian race is, on the lowest possible estimate, very nearly two grades higher than our own—that is, about as much as our race is above that of the African negro. This estimate, which may seem prodigious to some, is confirmed by the quick intelligence and high culture of the Athenian commonalty, before whom literary works were recited, and works of art exhibited, of a far more severe character than could possibly be appreciated by the average of our race, the calibre of whose intellect is easily gauged by a glance at the contents of a railway book-stall.

We know, and may guess something more, of the reason why this marvellously-gifted race declined. Social morality grew exceedingly lax; marriage became unfashionable, and was avoided; many of the more ambitious and accomplished women were avowed courtesans, and consequently infertile, and the mothers of the incoming population were of a heterogeneous class. In a small sea-bordered country, where emigration and immigration are constantly going on, and where the manners are as dissolute as were those of Greece in the period of which I speak, the purity of a race would necessarily fail. It can be, therefore, no surprise to us, though it has been a severe misfortune to humanity, that the high Athenian breed decayed and disappeared; for if it had maintained its excellence, and had multiplied and spread over large countries, displacing inferior populations (which it well might have done, for it was exceedingly prolific), it would assuredly have accomplished results advantageous to human civilization, to a degree that transcends our powers of imagination.

If we could raise the average standard of our race only one grade, what vast changes would be produced! The number of men of natural gifts equal to those of the eminent men of the present day, would be necessarily increased more than tenfold, as will be seen by the fourth column of the table p. 34, because there would be 2, 423 of them in each million instead of only 233; but far more important to the progress of civilization would be the increase in the yet higher orders of intellect. We know how intimately the course of events is dependent on the thoughts of a few illustrious men. If the first-rate men in the different groups had never been born, even if those among them who have a place in my appendices on account of their hereditary gifts, had never existed, the world would be very different to what it is. Now the table shows that the numbers in these, the loftiest grades of intellect, would be increased in a still higher proportion than that of which I have been speaking; thus the men that now rank under class G would be increased seventeenfold, by raising the average ability of the whole nation a single grade. We see by the table that all England contains (on the average, of course, of several years) only six men between the ages of thirty and eighty, whose natural gifts exceed class G; but in a country of the same population as ours, whose average was one grade higher, there would be eighty-two of such men; and in another whose average was two grades higher (such as I believe the Athenian to have been, in the interval 530—430 B.C.) no less than 1, 355 of them would be found. There is no improbability in so gifted a breed being able to maintain itself, as Athenian experience, rightly understood, has sufficiently proved; and as has also been proved by what I have written about the Judges, whose fertility is undoubted, although their average natural ability is F, or 5.5 degrees above the average of our own, and 3.5 above that of the average Athenians.

It seems to me most essential to the well-being of future generations, that the average standard of ability of the present time should be raised. Civilization is a new condition imposed upon man by the course of events, just as in the history of geological changes new conditions have continually been imposed on different races of animals. They have had the effect either of modifying the nature of the races through the process of natural selection, whenever the changes were sufficiently slow and the race sufficiently pliant, or of destroying them altogether, when the changes were too abrupt or the race unyielding. The number of the races of mankind that have been entirely destroyed under the pressure of the requirements of an incoming civilization, reads us a terrible lesson. Probably in no former period of the world has the destruction of the races of any animal whatever, been effected over such wide areas and with such startling rapidity as in the case of savage man. In the North American Continent, in the West Indian Islands, in the Cape of Good Hope, in Australia, New Zealand, and Van Diemen's Land, the human denizens of vast regions have been entirely swept away in the short space of three centuries, less by the pressure of a stronger race than through the influence of a civilization they were incapable of supporting. And we too, the foremost labourers in creating this civilization, are beginning to show ourselves incapable of keeping pace with our own work. The needs of centralization, communication, and culture, call for more brains and mental stamina than the average of our race possess. We are in crying want for a greater fund of ability in all stations of life; for neither the classes of statesmen, philosophers, artisans, nor labourers are up to the modern complexity of their several professions. An extended civilization like ours comprises more interests than the ordinary statesmen or philosophers of our present race are capable of dealing with, and it exacts more intelligent work than our ordinary artisans and labourers are capable of performing. Our race is overweighted, and appears likely to be drudged into degeneracy by demands that exceed its powers. If its average ability were raised a grade or two, our new classes F and G would conduct the complex affairs of the state at home and abroad as easily as our present F and G, when in the position of country squires, are able to manage the affairs of their establishments and tenantry. All other classes of the community would be similarly promoted to the level of the work required by the nineteenth century, if the average standard of the race were raised.

When the severity of the struggle for existence is not too great for the powers of the race, its action is healthy and conservative, otherwise it is deadly, just as we may see exemplified in the scanty, wretched vegetation that leads a precarious existence near the summer snow line of the Alps, and disappears altogether a little higher up. We want as much backbone as we can get, to bear the racket to which we are henceforth to be exposed, and as good brains as possible to contrive machinery, for modern life to work more smoothly than at present. We can, in some degree, raise the nature of man to a level with the new conditions imposed upon his existence, and we can also, in some degree, modify the conditions to suit his nature. It is clearly right that both these powers should be exerted, with the view of bringing his nature and the conditions of his existence into as close harmony as possible.

In proportion as the world becomes filled with mankind, the relations of society necessarily increase in complexity, and the nomadic disposition found in most barbarians becomes unsuitable to the novel conditions. There is a most unusual unanimity in respect to the causes of incapacity of savages for civilization, among writers on those hunting and migratory nations who are brought into contact with advancing colonization, and perish, as they invariably do, by the contact. They tell us that the labour of such men is neither constant nor steady; that the love of a wandering, independent life prevents their settling anywhere to work, except for a short time, when urged by want and encouraged by kind treatment. Meadows says that the Chinese call the barbarous races on their borders by a phrase which means "hither and thither, not fixed." And any amount of evidence might be adduced to show how deeply Bohemian habits of one kind or another, were ingrained in the nature of the men who inhabited most parts of the earth now overspread by the Anglo-Saxon and other civilized races. Luckily there is still room for adventure, and a man who feels the cravings of a roving, adventurous spirit to be too strong for resistance, may yet find a legitimate outlet for it in the colonies, in the army, or on board ship. But such a spirit is, on the whole, an heirloom that brings more impatient restlessness and beating of the wings against cage-bars, than persons of more civilized characters can readily comprehend, and it is directly at war with the more modern portion of our moral natures. If a man be purely a nomad, he has only to be nomadic, and his instinct is satisfied; but no Englishmen of the nineteenth century are purely nomadic. The most so among them have also inherited many civilized cravings that are necessarily starved when they become wanderers, in the same way as the wandering instincts are starved when they are settled at home. Consequently their nature has opposite wants, which can never be satisfied except by chance, through some very exceptional turn of circumstances. This is a serious calamity, and as the Bohemianism in the nature of our race is destined to perish, the sooner it goes, the happier for mankind. The social requirements of English life are steadily destroying it. No man who only works by fits and starts is able to obtain his living nowadays; for he has not a chance of thriving in competition with steady workmen. If his nature revolts against the monotony of daily labour, he is tempted to the public-house, to intemperance, and, it may be, to poaching, and to much more serious crime: otherwise he banishes himself from our shores. In the first case, he is unlikely to leave as many children as men of more domestic and marrying habits, and, in the second case, his breed is wholly lost to England. By this steady riddance of the Bohemian spirit of our race, the artisan part 'of our population is slowly becoming bred to its duties, and the primary qualities of the typical modern British workman are already the very opposite of those of the nomad. What they are now, was well described by Mr. Chadwick, as consisting of "great bodily strength, applied under the command of a steady, persevering will, mental self-contentedness, impassibility to external irrelevant impressions, which carries them through the continued repetition of toilsome labour, 'steady as time.'" It is curious to remark how unimportant to modern civilization has become the once famous and thoroughbred looking Norman. The type of his features, which is, probably, in some degree correlated with his peculiar form of adventurous disposition, is no longer characteristic of our rulers, and is rarely found among celebrities of the present day; it is more often met with among the undistinguished members of highly-born families, and especially among the less conspicuous officers of the army. Modern leading men in all paths of eminence, as may easily be seen in a collection of photographs, are of a coarser and more robust breed; less excitable and dashing, but endowed with far more ruggedness and real vigour. Such also is the case, as regards the German portion of the Austrian nation; they are far more high-caste in appearance than the Prussians, who are so plain that it is disagreeable to travel northwards from Vienna, and watch the change; yet the Prussians appear possessed of the greater moral and physical stamina.

Much more alien to the genius of an enlightened civilization than the nomadic habit, is the impulsive and uncontrolled nature of the savage. A civilized man must bear and forbear, he must keep before his mind the claims of the morrow as clearly as those of the passing minute; of the absent, as well as of the present. This is the most trying of the new conditions imposed on man by civilization, and the one that makes it hopeless for any but exceptional natures among savages, to live under them. The instinct of a savage is admirably consonant with the needs of savage life; every day he is in danger through transient causes; he lives from hand to mouth, in the hour and for the hour, without care for the past or forethought for the future: but such an instinct is utterly at fault in civilized life. The half-reclaimed savage, being unable to deal with more subjects of consideration than are directly before him, is continually doing acts through mere maladroitness and incapacity, at which he is afterwards deeply grieved and annoyed. The nearer inducements always seem to him, through his uncorrected sense of moral perspective, to be incomparably larger than others of the same actual size, but more remote; consequently, when the temptation of the moment has been yielded to and passed away, and its bitter result comes in its turn before the man, he is amazed and remorseful at his past weakness. It seems incredible that he should have done that yesterday which to-day seems so silly, so unjust, and so unkindly. The newly-reclaimed barbarian, with the impulsive, unstable nature of the savage, when lie also chances to be gifted with a peculiarly generous and affectionate disposition, is of all others the man most oppressed with the sense of sin.

Now it is a just assertion, and a common theme of moralists of many creeds, that man, such as we find him, is born with an imperfect nature. He has lofty aspirations, but there is a weakness in his disposition, which incapacitates him from carrying his nobler purposes into effect. He sees that some particular course of action is his duty, and should be his delight; but his inclinations are fickle and base, and do not conform to his better judgment. The whole moral nature of man is tainted with sin, which prevents him from doing the things he knows to be right.

The explanation I offer of this apparent anomaly, seems perfectly satisfactory from a scientific point of view. It is neither more nor less than that the development of our nature, whether under Darwin's law of natural selection, or through the effects of changed ancestral habits, has not yet overtaken the development of our moral civilization. Man was barbarous but yesterday, and therefore it is not to be expected that the natural aptitudes of his race should already have become moulded into accordance with his very recent advance. We, men of the present centuries, are like animals suddenly transplanted among new conditions of climate and of food: our instincts fail us under the altered circumstances.

My theory is confirmed by the fact that the members of old civilizations are far less sensible than recent converts from barbarism, of their nature being inadequate to their moral needs. The conscience of a negro is aghast at his own wild, impulsive nature, and is easily stirred by a preacher, but it is scarcely possible to ruffle the self-complacency of a steady-going Chinaman.

The sense of original sin would show, according to my theory, not that man was fallen from a high estate, but that he was rising in moral culture with more rapidity than the nature of his race could follow. My view is corroborated by the conclusion reached at the end of each of the many independent lines of ethnological research—that the human race were utter savages in the beginning; and that, after myriads of years of barbarism, man has but very recently found his way into the paths of morality and civilization.

http://galton.org/books/hereditary-genius/text/html2/genius.htm#_Toc520740008

[Longbowman]

Cattell openly supported fascism in the 1930s. While British eugenists of the 1930s were often critical of Nazi eugenics and especially of Nazi race science, Raymond Cattell was generally an enthusiastic supporter. As William Tucker points out, Cattell gave "due acknowledgment, not only to Günther, but even to Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau." Günther was one of the leaders of the Nordicist school of racial philosophy in Nazi Germany. His works, like Rassenkunde des Deutschen Volkes were deeply racist and anti-Semitic and he was a regular contributor to Nazi party magazines. Günther "was widely read in Nazi Germany and was much admired by leading Nazi politicians such as Alfred Rosenberg, who in 1941 formally honored Günther with the Goethe medal (Tucker, 1994, p. 239; Searchlight, 1984, p. 3).

Arthur Comte des Gobinau wasn't actually a count, his father just added that part to his surname. He never pretended to be a count, either. Furthermore, he was a philosemite, surprisingly enough.

[Felix Volkbein]

Arthur Comte des Gobinau wasn't actually a count, his father just added that part to his surname.

I think you got that factoid from the English Wikipedia, which is wrong in this instance. His French Wiki article is much more thorough and clears up the confusion: Son acte de naissance ne porte pas de particule, mais il s'agit d'une erreur de l'état-civil : sa sœur Caroline, née en 1820, est bien de Gobineau. ("His birth certificate does not bear the nobiliary particle, but it reflects an error on the part of the vital record: his sister Caroline, born in 1820, is indeed de Gobineau.") I've seen him referenced as Comte de Gobineau too often for him to have been a poseur, and he always moved in aristocratic coteries.