Alternative Eugenics

The Orthosphere offers a striking proposal on the fall of Rome. It was at one time a commonplace among historians that Rome had failed for demographic reasons, but these were usually said to be matters of the will. Romans wouldn't serve in the Legions anymore as they became wealthy and lazy (to summarize entirely too quickly), and thus foreign mercenaries had to be recruited as auxiliaries. These auxiliaries came to be powerful enough that the various Germanic tribes were ultimately in position to seize whole portions of the Western Empire, and finally Rome itself. 

Since these histories were being written during the age in which eugenics was a popular theory among the scientifically-minded, one might have expected them to argue that the Romans' superior stock was out-bred by or cross-bred with inferior foreigners. For the English-speaking and German-speaking and French-speaking communities of historians, which together were most of the whole community of historians in that age, such talk was absurd. They were racists, of course, but talk of Germanic tribes like their own being inferior to Italians (often described in period documents as "swarthy," itself a Germanic word with racist connotations) would have been rejected out of hand. Obviously, for an early 20th century eugenicist, the Romans must have been improved by the association.

The Orthosphere's proposal is at once eu/dysgenic and yet not racist. That's what I find striking about it.

There was more than one cause of this depopulation and degeneration, but the greatest cause was removal of virile males from the breeding population so they could fight and die in distant lands.  As the great classical historian (and eugenicist) Otto Seeck explained,

“Only cowards remained, and from their brood came forward the new generation. Cowardice showed itself in lack of originality and in slavish following of masters and traditions.”***

Imperialism is profoundly dysgenic because when you “send forth the best ye breed,” you can no longer breed the best.  The American sage Benjamin Franklin saw the dysgenic effect of mass conscription and believed it must invariably undermine a militaristic people with depopulation, degeneration and collapse.  While he was ambassador to France, Franklin observed:

“A standing army not only diminishes the population of a country, but even the size and breed of the human species.  For an army is the flower of the nation.  All the most vigorous, stout, and well-made men in a kingdom are to be found in the army, and these men in general cannot marry.”†

This differs of course from our own standing army, in which one of the first things young soldiers tend to do is marry in order to get out of the barracks. Still, they do have a point to make about our own society as well as ancient Rome: the fact that we are putting off marriage and childbirth for the most intelligent and successful of our young men and women may well be having a negative effect on the quality of the population overall. 

Eugenics in terms of selective breeding is discredited in politics, but widely practiced in animal husbandry. Setting aside silly notions like race, different people like different animals are differently able and intelligent, and we know that these qualities are heritable to a degree. If the less able and intelligent are breeding early and often, and the moreso later and less, over time it will tend to result in a population that is weakened. 

It's a challenging idea, one that I advance for discussion with caution given the evils plainly associated with human eugenics. Regular readers of the Hall are a good group, though, and can be trusted to handle such ideas with due care.