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The Human Harvest, A Study Of The Decay Of Races Through The Survival Of The Unfit (1907)
The Human Harvest, A Study Of The Decay Of Races Through The Survival Of The Unfit (1907)
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THE HUMAN HARVEST WAS BAD !" Thus the historian sums up the conditions in Rome in the days of the good emperor Marcus Aurelius.
By this he meant that while population and wealth were increasing, manhood had failed. There were men enough in the streets of Rome, men enough in the camps, men enough in the menial labor or in no labor at all, but of good soldiers there were too few. "Vir had given place to homo" Roman men to mere human beings. For the business of the state, which in those days was mainly war, the men were inadequate.
In the recognition of this condition we touch the overshadowing fact in the history of Europe, the effect of military selection on the breed of men. This lesson, in such fashion as I may, I shall try to set forth in these pages.
In beginning this discussion I must bring forward certain fragments of history, stories told because they are true, and one parable not true, but told for the lesson it teaches. And this is the first: Once there was a man, strong, wealthy and patient, who dreamed of a finer type of horse than had ever yet existed. This horse should be handsome, clean-limbed, intelligent, docile, strong and swift. These traits were to be not those of one horse alone, a member of a favored equine aristocracy, they were to be "bred in the bone " so that they would continue from generation to generation the attributes of a special common type of horse. And with this dream ever before his waking eyes, he invoked for his aid the four twin genii of organic life, the four by which all the magic of transformism of species has been accomplished either in nature or in art. And these forces once in his service, he left to their control all the plans included in his great ambition. These four genii or fates are not strangers to us, nor were they new to the human race. Being so great and so strong, they are invisible to all save those who seek them. Men who deal with them after the fashion of science give them commonplace names, — variation, heredity, segregation, selection.
By this he meant that while population and wealth were increasing, manhood had failed. There were men enough in the streets of Rome, men enough in the camps, men enough in the menial labor or in no labor at all, but of good soldiers there were too few. "Vir had given place to homo" Roman men to mere human beings. For the business of the state, which in those days was mainly war, the men were inadequate.
In the recognition of this condition we touch the overshadowing fact in the history of Europe, the effect of military selection on the breed of men. This lesson, in such fashion as I may, I shall try to set forth in these pages.
In beginning this discussion I must bring forward certain fragments of history, stories told because they are true, and one parable not true, but told for the lesson it teaches. And this is the first: Once there was a man, strong, wealthy and patient, who dreamed of a finer type of horse than had ever yet existed. This horse should be handsome, clean-limbed, intelligent, docile, strong and swift. These traits were to be not those of one horse alone, a member of a favored equine aristocracy, they were to be "bred in the bone " so that they would continue from generation to generation the attributes of a special common type of horse. And with this dream ever before his waking eyes, he invoked for his aid the four twin genii of organic life, the four by which all the magic of transformism of species has been accomplished either in nature or in art. And these forces once in his service, he left to their control all the plans included in his great ambition. These four genii or fates are not strangers to us, nor were they new to the human race. Being so great and so strong, they are invisible to all save those who seek them. Men who deal with them after the fashion of science give them commonplace names, — variation, heredity, segregation, selection.
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