For some reason, the third essay was split between the November and December issues and, unlike the second essay, it did not have a subtitle.34 The two parts, however, have continuous pagination, and their contents make clear that, as Florinskii indicated in the introduction to his treatise, the essay should have been titled “the degeneration of the human breed.”35 Echoing Shelgunov’s analogy between a “physiological individuum” and a “social organism,” it opens with a simple statement:
Through all times, the history of mankind has shown endless examples of progressive as well as regressive movement. Whether we observe the human life en masse — in entire nations, or in separate groups — estates and families, everywhere we notice the same fact of the [initial] gradual increase, then the gradual or quick decrease, and, finally, the complete disappearance of life. The life of a nation, an estate, and a family has its own periods and limits, as does the life of an individual. Everywhere there are periods of youth, maturity, and old age. The duration of these periods for different nations and estates differs, as it differs for every individual human being, [and] depends on the supply of organic forces, on the strength of the physical and moral constitution of a nation, and on accidental disorders of state and social life [1].
But, Florinskii continues, “the degeneration of peoples (narodov), to which history bears witness, occurs in the same way, though on a smaller scale, during our own epoch, before our own eyes” [2]. He describes two major ways in which such degeneration takes place: first, “by means of the fusion with, or the transformation into, another nation,” and second,
“by means of diminution, weakening, and extinction (vymiranie)” [2]. In the
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first case, “a tribe or a nation does not disappear in the direct sense of the word, but only changes into a different, usually better, form.”
Florinskii sees this not as regressive, but to the contrary, as progressive movement, which allows a less developed tribe “to catch up with” the more developed ones. In direct opposition to both Royer’s and Zaitsev’s views, he considers this a much more humane and just outcome of the contact between tribes of different degrees of development than the alternative: “slavery and inescapable extinction.” The second path of the degeneration of the human breed, according to Florinskii, has its main causes in “deplorable tyranny, enslavement, poverty, and moral failings.” He backs this statement with mortality statistics among slaves of African descent. According to numerous observations, he states, whether in New York, or in French, English, or other colonies, slaves have twice the mortality rate of free people, while “the emancipation of slaves in Saint-Domingue led to the doubling of their numbers” in a very short time [4].
But it is not only colonialism and slavery that drive extinction.
According to Florinskii, poverty in general is a leading cause of degeneration. A comparison of mortality among different classes and social groups in European countries shows vast disparities: “In England the [median] life expectancy of the upper and educated classes is fifty-eight years, while among the working and poor classes it is only thirty.”
“Poverty and misery act most deadly on children,” he asserts, providing statistical evidence for his claim. In London, child mortality before the age of ten constitutes among the gentry only 2% of all mortality, among merchants and retailers — 6%, and among the poor — 28%. In Dublin, among the children of the working class up to 33-36% die before the age of two, and in bad housing this number rises to more than 50%.36 These examples are sufficient, he argues, to show that “the health and longevity of the people closely depend on all conditions of life, and especially their material wellbeing.”37 “In an oppressed race,” he postulates, “the number of deaths will be higher than the number of births” [5].
Florinskii likens the extinction of human tribes to the displacement and extinction of “weak animals and plants” in competition with animals and plants that are “more advanced and endowed with better means for the self-preservation and dispersion of its kind.” So, it is the competition with the strong (in the case of humans, exploitation by
161 3. The Book: Darwinism and Social Hygiene
the strong) that is the real cause of extinction. “The more equal is the distribution of wealth and estate’s rights and privileges, and the fewer exploiting parasites there are in a society,” he reasons, “the greater the harmony and success in the development of people’s forces and the more protected the [poorer] estates will be against weakening and degeneration” [6].
Florinskii is not attempting to solve “the issue whether such harmony is possible in complex human societies.” For him, it is enough to point out the link between degeneration and poverty — this “social sore that threatens the life of entire estates and even races (colored).” “How to prevent or diminish this threat is not a question for natural history,”
he admits, “but a social question.” Nevertheless, he insists, a rational society must recognize that the oppressed classes need “not [our]
laments regarding their helpless situation, but such social institutions that would support them and prevent their impending degeneration.”
“If we merely state, even on the basis of historical facts, that a lower race is destined by nature to die out and just rest the case,” he remarks in a clear allusion to Zaitsev’s statements about the “destiny” of the black race,
“we would have sinned both against the truth and against humanity.” If all we have seen so far is that the white race had enslaved and displaced the colored ones everywhere and that the serfs had suffered under their masters, he maintains, “this is not the fault of Nature and Fate, but the bloodthirsty inclinations of humans themselves.” “It is not completely impossible to reign in such inclinations, to protect the weak against the strong, and to equalize the rights and means of existence,” he declares forcefully, “to the contrary, trying to do so is the sacred duty of everyone who can help by word or deed.”
The process of degeneration, according to Florinskii, affects not only races and tribes, but smaller groups, as well: “The alternate rise and fall of families, the flourishing and declining of privileged estates represents a common and commonly known phenomenon” [7]. To support this statement, he cites Don Quixote (in French!):
Il y a dans le monde deux sortes de races; l’une tire son origine des rois et des princes, mais peu à peu le temps et la mauvaise fortune l’ont fait déchoir, et elle finit en pointes, comme les pyramides;
l’autre, partie de bas, а toujours été en montant, jusqu’a faire naitre de très grands seigneurs de manière que la différence qui
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existe entre elles, c’est que l’une а été ce qu’elle n’est plus, et que l’autre est ce qu’elle n’était pas.38
Already Aristotle had noticed the degeneration of old aristocratic families, he claims. History is full of similar stories about the Egyptian and Syrian kings, the Venetian patricians, and the French aristocracy. “The examples of such degeneration of aristocratic families and privileged classes more generally could be seen wherever these classes formed closed circles” [8], he explains echoing Byron’s poem, since in making spousal choices they value the “noble origins” over the intellectual and physical qualities of a spouse. The inbreeding amplifies progressively all possible defects and gives “to a whole estate a particular stamp of moral impotence and emptiness.” “This atrophy, this racial suicide,” he observes, “happens gradually and therefore the individuals involved do not notice their [own] self-destruction” [8].
Extending his previous discussion of the ideals of health, beauty, and mind, Florinskii rejects the popular notion that the aristocracy represents the best examples of beauty in particular nations. The aristocratic beauty, he states, “only concerns the external features and largely does not harmonize with the [natural] physiological functioning of organs.” “In the same way as English racing horses, merino sheep, Berkshire pigs, miniscule dogs, and so on, cannot be considered the [natural] zoological examples of these animals,” he elaborates, “so too, the aristocratic type, perfected exclusively in terms of external beauty and gentility, cannot be considered the example of human physical perfection.” Various breeds of animals were produced for special purposes, he observes, but to the detriment of “the physiological functioning and harmonious development of more important organs,”
and thus represent “degeneration, not perfection.”