Several days ago, in response to an objection, I pointed out that every single time I'd guessed where I would find a connection between Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection and eugenics, from deceptively anodyne to massively genocidal, I'd found it in the form of primary documentation. That is absolutely not surprising. Eugenics is a rather simple and logical conclusion to be drawn from the claims of Darwin, founded as they are, in turn, in the claims of Malthus, founded in turn, on the British class system. Eugenics, from the start, as soon as Francis Galton read On the Origin of Species- by his own declaration his inspiration in inventing eugenics* generated the idea that the existence of "inferior" people, individuals - the disabled, the poor and in groups - whichever group of whichever minority the always either affluent or aspiring to affluence and, in the beginning, always White early adopters of Darwinism held to be inferior to, inevitably, their own, was a danger to the "superior." I have never found a Darwinist express themselves on the biological inferiority of whatever group they believed themselves to be a member of. Odd, that.
When I took up the challenge made to me to "prove that there was a link between Charles Darwin and the Nazi genocide of the Jews" I knew where to look because I knew Hitler had used the infamous book that goes by the nickname "Baur, Fischer, Lenz" mentioned here the past two days, as his major source of scientific information. And I knew that it being, in its time, a "modern" book of science, that it was certain to stress the "latest findings" over older sources, though it is certain that the theory that Baur, Fischer and Lenz promulgated in that book was derived from the theory of natural selection.
I also knew about Pearson and Moul's antisemitic scientific paper of 1925 which, when I read it read like a more orderly presentation of the very ideas that Hitler and the other Nazis asserted in regard to Jews and, especially the biological, economic and national dangers that the British scientists Pearson and Moul claimed, as science, with numbers and with Eugen Fischer's contribution to their work. I knew that that paper must have been known to them in the later editions of the infamous book which continued to inform the Nazis as they were going from eugenics to genocide.
I also know the dishonest tactics of the champions of St. Charles Darwin, they will deny the most obvious and glaring facts in primary documentation, the words of Darwin, the words of those he cites such as Ernst Haeckel (a proto-Nazi of the most obvious kind) and Francis Galton - indisputably the inventor of Eugenics, and the likes of Thomas Huxley whose racist, gleefully genocidal predictions in his 1865 article written for popular consumption, Emancipation Black and White is so infamous that even the Darwinist hack Richard Dawkins has had to address its vileness in contemporary polite society.
So I anticipated it being denied that Karl Pearson was one of the foremost Darwinists of the second generation of Darwinists, the student of Francis Galton, a man whose eugenics writing Charles Darwin confirmed as science in his citations in The Descent of Man and by the glowing, effusively praising letter he sent his cousin on having his wife reading Hereditary Genius to him as he was too unwell to read it for himself. Darwin being such a great example of enhanced "fitness" that he spent much of his adulthood as a valetudinarian - some suspect he had a raging case of lactose intolerance that the man of science doesn't seem to have noticed the cause of even as he gorged himself on milk products. As someone who developed lactose intolerance in middle-age, you'd have to be especially dull to not notice what was making you sick in that way. In terms of his own claim to fame, his theory, it certainly didn't occur to him to voluntarily limit the number of offspring he'd pass his frequent ill health on to. Curbs on reproduction, that was for the poor and the officially disabled, not someone like him. Anyway, his cousin Galton had scientifically bestowed superiority on their shared family so that let him off the hook for practicing sexual continence. Odd, that.
Anyway, Karl Pearson certainly was considered to be an eminent Darwinist, as I noted yesterday, he was the fourth recipient of the Darwin Medal given by the Royal Society, a medal given to, among others, Francis Darwin, another of Darwin's eugenicist sons. We also know that in the period that Darwinism's many problems led to a slump in its accptance by scientists, Pearson saw himself as a keeper of the flame. Here from his truly putrid 1912 Cavendish lecture, Darwinism, Medical Progress and Eugenics:
. . . But there is undoubtedly a fly in the amber, and if the alliance between eugenics and medicine, as a whole, is to be a real one, we cannot for a moment overlook a possible source of divergence between them.
I belong to a school which still believes that Darwin taught us the truth. I think it is rather the fashion nowadays to dismiss its views, not by meeting its arguments, but by describing it as "mid-Victorian." When in literature, science, and statemanship this twentieth century has produced minds which out-top the " mid- Victorians," then it will be time enough to reply to a mere nick- name. Let me, even at the risk of talking about the familiar, sketch for you the broad outlines of Darwin's theory of evolutionary progress. The individual better fitted to its environment lived longer than its fellows, had more offspring, and these, inheriting its better fitness, raised the type of the race. The environment against which the individual had to struggle here was not only formed by the other members of its species, not only by its physical surroundings, but by the germs of disease of all types. According to Darwin — and some of us still believe him to be right — the ascent of man, physical and mental, was brought about by this survival of the fitter. Now, if you are going lo take Darwinism as your theory of life and apply it to human problems, you must not only believe it to be true, but you must set to, and demonstrate that it actually applies.
If you are puzzled by the first sentence I excerpted, the "possible source of divergence" between, you should first read the definition of what he means by "eugenics".
Examine with me for a moment the definition of my science : " National eugenics is the study of those agencies under social control, which may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally."
That is what eugenics proposes to do, to control aspects of human socieity to make up for what Francis Galton and, agreeing with him, Charles Darwin held was the impediment of natural selection killing off the unfit by civilization, human morality and striving for well being. If you doubt that, read The Descent of Man where he says exactly that and read his citations, particularly the many he made of Galton and Haeckel.
What kinds of problems created by medical treatment does Karl Pearson see needed to be addressed because it kept people alive and healthy and able to have children. I think I'm going to write a few posts on this lecture by Pearson because it is such an exposition of the proto-Nazi thinking that was current in British science (not to mention American and other English language science) in such obvous depravity before the Nazis cited Pearson and other English language sources in the very scientific publications that the Nazis read and used as the basis of their genocidal policies. Not only did Nazis read them but when there was a Nazi party to join, so many eminent scientists joined up and contributed their science to the Nazi cause. It was certainly one of the main motives in the creation of the post-war coverup of the relationship of natural selection, Darwinism to Nazism to pretend that there were not English speaking scientists who were thinking the same things and providing them with the ideas they mixed with their own to produce the genocides and wars of the Nazi era. Pearson's lecture is also important to this matter in that it proves not only was he collaborating with the founders of Nazi eugenic theory, Fritz Lenz, Alfred Ploetz, he seems, when given the chance between taking a British researcher whose results disconfirms Darwin's theoretical claims to prefer the developing Nazi eugenics of the likes of Alfred Ploetz. But that's for later.
I will also note that I am still in the same habit I described governed my reading of Darwin, The Descent of Man and looking up citations, in this the citations of Pearson and Leonard Darwin, Paul Popenoe, and others in the book that taught biology to Hitler as he dictated Mein Kampf and its later editions that instructed the Nazis' genocide program, "Baur, Fischer, Lenz," It's rather hair raising, even to someone like me who isn't surprised at what I'm finding.
*Wilhelm Schallmeyer, often called the man who established eugenics in Germany, also credited his reading of On the Origin of Species as the source of his eugenics independent of Galton, as noted by Leonard Darwin in April 1939.
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