time," she
elsewhere writes (_Ueber Liebe und Ehe_, p. 445),
"when the
attitude of society towards a sexual union will
depend not on the
form of the union, but on the value of the children
created. Men
and women will then devote the same religious
earnestness to the
psychic and physical perfectioning of this sexual
task as
Christians have devoted to the salvation of their
souls."
Sir Francis Galton, writing a few years later, but
without doubt
independently, in 1905, on "Restrictions in
Marriage," and
"Eugenics as a Factor in Religion" (_Sociological Papers_ of the
Sociological Society, vol. ii, pp. 13, 53), remarks:
"Religious
precepts, founded on the ethics and practice of
older days,
require to be reinterpreted, to make them conform to
the needs of
progressive nations. Ours are already so far behind
modern
requirements that much of our practice and our
profession cannot
be reconciled without illegitimate casuistry. It
seems to me
that few things are more needed by us in England
than a revision
of our religion, to adapt it to the intelligence and
needs of
this present time.... Evolution is a grand
phantasmagoria, but it
assumes an infinitely more interesting aspect under
the knowledge
that the intelligent action of the human will is, in
some small
measure, capable of guiding its course. Man has the
power of
doing this largely, so far as the evolution of
humanity is
concerned; he has already affected the quality and
distribution
of organic life so widely that the changes on the
surface of the
earth, merely through his disforestings and
agriculture, would be
recognizable from a distance as great as that of the
moon.
Eugenics is a virile creed, full of hopefulness, and
appealing to
many of the noblest feelings of our nature."
As will always happen in every great movement, a few
fanatics
have carried into absurdity the belief in the
supreme religious
importance of procreation. Love, apart from
procreation, writes
one of these fanatics, Vacher de Lapouge, in the
spirit of some
of the early Christian Fathers (see _ante_ p. 509),
is an
aberration comparable to sadism and sodomy.
Procreation is the
only thing that matters, and it must become "a
legally prescribed
social duty" only to be exercised by carefully
selected persons,
and forbidden to others, who must, by necessity, be
deprived of
the power of procreation, while abortion and
infanticide must,
under some circumstances, become compulsory.
Romantic love will
disappear by a process of selection, as also will
all religion
except a new form of phallic worship (G. Vacher de
Lapouge, "Die
Crisis der Sexuellen Moral," _Politisch
Anthropologische Revue_,
No. 8, 1908). It is sufficient to point out that
love is, and
always must be, the natural portal to generation.
Such excesses
of procreative fanaticism cannot fail to occur, and
they render
the more necessary the emphasis which has here been
placed on the
art of love.
"What has posterity done for me that I should do
anything for posterity?"
a cynic is said to have asked. The answer is very
simple. The human race
has done everything for him. All that he is, and can be, is its creation;
all that he can do is the result of its laboriously
accumulated
traditions. It is only by working towards the creation of a still better
posterity, that he can repay the good gifts which the
human race has
brought him.[426] Just as, within the limits of this
present life, many
who have received benefits and kindnesses they can never repay to the
actual givers, find a pleasure in vicariously repaying the like to
others, so the heritage we have received from our
ascendents we can never
repay, save by handing it on in a better form to our
descendants.
It is undoubtedly true that the growth of eugenical
ideals has not been,
for the most part, due to religious feeling. It has been chiefly the
outcome of a very gradual, but very comprehensive,
movement towards social
amelioration, which has been going on for more than a
century, and which
has involved a progressive effort towards the betterment of all the
conditions of life. The ideals of this movement were
proclaimed in the
eighteenth century, they began to find expression early in the nineteenth
century, in the initiation of the modern system of
sanitation, in the
growth of factory legislation, in all the movements
which have been borne
onwards by socialism hand in hand with individualism.
The inevitable
tendency has been slowly towards the root of the matter; it began to be
seen that comparatively little can be effected by
improving the conditions
of life of adults; attention began to be concentrated on the child, on the
infant, on the embryo in its mother's womb, and this
resulted in the
fruitful movement of puericulture inspired by Pinard,
and finally the
problem is brought to its source at the point of
procreation, and the
regulation of sexual selection between stocks and
between individuals as
the prime condition of life. Here we have the science of eugenics which
Sir Francis Galton has done so much to make a definite, vital, and
practical study, and which in its wider bearings he
defines as "the
science which deals with those social eugenics that
influence, mentally or
physically, the racial qualities of future generations."
In its largest
aspect, eugenics is, as Galton has elsewhere said, man's attempt "to
replace Natural Selection by other processes that are
more merciful and
not less effective."
In the last chapter of his _Memories of My Life_
(1908), on "Race
Improvement," Sir Francis Galton sets forth the
origin and
development of his conception of the science of
eugenics. The
term, "eugenics," he first used in 1884, in his _Human Faculty_,
but the conception dates from 1865, and even
earlier. Galton has
more recently discussed the problems of eugenics in
papers read
before the Sociological Society (_Sociological
Papers_, vols. i
and ii, 1905), in the Herbert Spencer Lecture on
"Probability the
Foundation of Eugenics," (1907), and elsewhere.
Galton's numerous
memoirs on this subject have now been published in a
collected
form by the Eugenics Education Society, which was
established in
1907, to further and to popularize the eugenical
attitude towards
social questions; _The Eugenics Review_ is published
by this
Society. On the more strictly scientific side,
eugenic studies
are carried on in the Eugenics Laboratory of the
University of
London, established by Sir Francis Galton, and now
working in
connection with Professor Karl Pearson's biometric
laboratory, in
University College. Much of Professor Pearson's
statistical work
in this and allied directions, is the elaboration of
ideas and
suggestions thrown out by Galton. See, e.g., Karl
Pearson's
Robert Boyle Lecture, "The Scope and Importance to the State of
the Science of National Eugenics" (1907).
_Biometrika_, edited by
Karl Pearson in association with other workers,
contains numerous
statistical memoirs on eugenics. In Germany, the
_Archiv für
Rassen und Gesellschafts-biologie_, and the
_Politisch-Anthropologische Revue_, are largely
occupied with
various aspects of such subjects, and in America,
_The Popular
Science Monthly_ from time to time, publishes
articles which have
a bearing on eugenics.
At one time there was a tendency to scoff, or to laugh, at the eugenic
movement. It was regarded as an attempt to breed men as men breed animals,
and it was thought a sufficiently easy task to sweep
away this new
movement with the remark that love laughs at bolts and bars. It is now
beginning to be better understood. None but fanatics
dream of abolishing
love in order to effect pairing by rule. It is merely a question of
limiting the possible number of mates from whom each may select a partner,
and that, we must remember, has always been done even by savages, for, as
it has been said, "eugenics is the oldest of the
sciences." The question
has merely been transformed. Instead of being limited
mechanically by
caste, we begin to see that the choice of sexual mates must be limited
intelligently by actual fitness. Promiscuous marriages have never been the
rule; the possibility of choice has always been narrow, and the most
primitive peoples have exerted the most marked self-
restraint. It is not
so merely among remote races but among our own European ancestors.
Throughout the whole period of Catholic supremacy the
Canon law
multiplied the impediments to matrimony, as by ordaining that
consanguinity to the fourth degree (third cousins), as well as spiritual
relationship, is an impediment, and by such arbitrary
prohibitions limited
the range of possible mates at least as much as it would be limited by the
more reasonable dictates of eugenic considerations.
At the present day it may be said that the principle of the voluntary
control of procreation, not for the selfish ends of the individual, but in
order to extinguish disease, to limit human misery, and to raise the
general level of humanity by substituting the ideal of quality for the
vulgar ideal of mere quantity, is now generally
accepted, alike by medical
pathologists, embryologists and neurologists, and by
sociologists and
moralists.
It would be easy to multiply quotations from
distinguished
authorities on this point. Thus, Metchnikoff points
out (_Essais
Optimistes_, p. 419) that orthobiosis seems to
involve the
limitation of offspring in the fight against
disease. Ballantyne
concludes his great treatise on _Antenanal
Pathology_ with the
statement that "Eugenics" or well-begetting, is one of the
world's most pressing problems. Dr. Louise
Robinovitch, the
editor of the _Journal of Mental Pathology_, in a
brilliant and
thoughtful paper, read before the Rome Congress of
Psychology in
1905, well spoke in the same sense: "Nations have not yet
elevated the energy of genesic function to the
dignity of an
energy. Other energies known to us, even of the
meanest grade,
have long since been wisely utilized, and their
activities based
on the principle of the strictest possible economy.
This economic
utilization has been brought about, not through any
enforcement
of legislative restrictions, but through steadily
progressive
human intelligence. Economic handling of genesic
function will,
like the economic function of other energies, come
about through
a steady and progressive intellectual development of
nations."
"There are circumstances," says C.H. Hughes, ("Restricted
Procreation," _Alienist and Neurologist_, May,
1908), "under
which the propagation of a human life may be as
gravely criminal
as the taking of a life already begun."
From the general biological, as well as from the
sociological
side, the acceptance of the same standpoint is
constantly
becoming more general, for it is recognized as the
inevitable
outcome of movements which have long been in
progress.
"Already," wrote Haycraft (_Darwinism and Race Progress_, p.
160), referring to the law for the prevention of
cruelty to
children, "public opinion has expressed itself in the public
rule that a man and woman, in begetting a child,
must take upon
themselves the obligation and responsibility of
seeing that that
child is not subjected to cruelty and hardship. It
is but one
step more to say that a man and a woman shall be
under obligation
not to produce children, when it is certain that,
from their want
of physique, they will have to undergo suffering,
and will keep
up but an unequal struggle with their fellows."
Professor J.
Arthur Thomson, in his volume on _Heredity_ (1908),
vigorously
and temperately pleads (p. 528) for rational methods
of eugenics,
as specially demanded in an age like our own, when
the unfit have
been given a better chance of reproduction than they
have ever
been given in any other age. Bateson, again,
referring to the
growing knowledge of heredity, remarks (_Mendel's
Principles of
Heredity_, 1909, p. 305): "Genetic knowledge must certainly lead
to new conceptions of justice, and it is by no means
impossible
that, in the light of such knowledge, public opinion
will welcome
measures likely to do more for the extinction of the
criminal and
the degenerate than has been accomplished by ages of
penal
enactment." Adolescent youths and girls, said Anton von Menger,
in his last book, the pregnant _Neue Sittenlehre_
(1905), must be
taught that the production of children, under
certain
circumstances, is a crime; they must also be taught
the voluntary
restraint of conception, even in health; such
teaching, Menger
rightly added, is a necessary preliminary to any
legislation in
this direction.
Of recent years, many books and articles have been
devoted to the
advocacy of eugenic methods. Mention may be made,
for instance,
of _Population and Progress_ (1907), by Montague
Crackanthorpe,
President of the Eugenics Education Society. See
also, Havelock
Ellis, "Eugenics and St. Valentine," _Nineteenth Century and
After_, May, 1906. It may be mentioned that nearly
thirty years
ago, Miss J.H. Clapperton, in her _Scientific
Meliorism_ (1885,
Ch. XVII), pointed out that the voluntary restraint
of
procreation by Neo-Malthusian methods, apart from
merely
prudential motives, there clearly recognized, is "a new key to
the social position," and a necessary condition for
"national
regeneration." Professor Karl Pearson's _Groundwork of Eugenics_,
(1909) is, perhaps, the best brief introduction to
the subject.
Mention may also be made of Dr. Saleeby's
_Parenthood and Race
Culture_ (1909), written in a popular and
enthusiastic manner.
How widely the general principles of eugenics are
now accepted as
the sound method of raising the level of the human
race, was well
shown at a meeting of the Sociological Society, in
1905, when,
after Sir Francis Galton had read papers on the
question, the
meeting heard the opinions of numerous sociologists,
economists,
biologists, and well-known thinkers in various
lands, who were
present, or who had sent communications. Some
twenty-one
expressed more or less unqualified approval, and
only three or
four had objections to offer, mostly on matters of
detail
(_Sociological Papers_, published by the
Sociological Society,
vol. ii, 1905).
If we ask by what channels this impulse towards the
control of procreation
for the elevation of the race is expressing itself in
practical life, we
shall scarcely fail to find that there are at least two such channels: (1)
the growing sense of sexual responsibility among women as well as men, and
(2) the conquest of procreative control which has been achieved in recent
years, by the general adoption of methods for the
prevention of
conception.
It has already been necessary in a previous chapter to discuss the
far-reaching significance of woman's personal
responsibility as an element
in the modification of the sexual life of modern
communities. Here it need
only be pointed out that the autonomous authority of a woman over her own
person, in the sexual sphere, involves on her part a
consent to the act of
procreation which must be deliberate. We are apt to
think that this is a
new and almost revolutionary demand; it is, however,
undoubtedly a
natural, ancient, and recognized privilege of women that they should not
be mothers without their own consent. Even in the
Islamic world of the
_Arabian Nights_, we find that high praise is accorded to the "virtue and
courage" of the woman who, having been ravished in her sleep, exposed, and
abandoned on the highway, the infant that was the fruit of this
involuntary union, "not wishing," she said, "to take the responsibility
before Allah of a child that had been born without my
consent."[427] The
approval with which this story is narrated clearly shows that to the
public of Islam it seemed entirely just and humane that a woman should not
have a child, except by her own deliberate will. We have been accustomed
to say in later days that the State needs children, and that it is the
business and the duty of women to supply them. But the State has no more
right than the individual to ravish a woman against her will. We are
beginning to realize that if the State wants children it must make it
agreeable to women to produce them, as under natural and equitable
conditions it cannot fail to be. "The women will solve the question of
mankind," said Ibsen in one of his rare and pregnant private utterances,
"and they will do it as mothers." But it is unthinkable that any question
should ever be solved by a helpless, unwilling, and
involuntary act which
has not even attained to the dignity of animal joy.
It is sometimes supposed, and even assumed, that the
demand of
women that motherhood must never be compulsory,
means that they
are unwilling to be mothers on any terms. In a few
cases that may
be so, but it is certainly not the case as regards
the majority
of sane and healthy women in any country. On the
contrary, this
demand is usually associated with the desire to
glorify
motherhood, if not, indeed, even with the thought of
extending
motherhood to many who are to-day shut out from it.
"It seems to
me," wrote Lady Henry Somerset, some years ago ("The Welcome
Child," _Arena_, April, 1895), "that life will be dearer and
nobler the more we recognize that there is no
indelicacy in the
climax and crown of creative power, but, rather,
that it is the
highest glory of the race. But if voluntary
motherhood is the
crown of the race, involuntary compulsory motherhood
is the very
opposite.... Only when both man and woman have
learned that the
most sacred of all functions given to women must be
exercised by
the free will alone, can children be born into the
world who have
in them the joyous desire to live, who claim that
sweetest
privilege of childhood, the certainty that they can
expand in the
sunshine of the love which is their due." Ellen Key, similarly,
while pointing out (_Ueber Liebe und Ehe_, pp. 14,
265) that the
tyranny of the old Protestant religious spirit which
enjoined on
women unlimited submission to joyless motherhood
within "the
whited sepulchre of marriage" is now being broken, exalts the
privileges of voluntary motherhood, while admitting
that there
may be a few exceptional cases in which women may
withdraw
themselves from motherhood for the sake of the other
demands of
their personality, though, "as a general rule, the woman who
refuses motherhood in order to serve humanity, is
like a soldier
who prepares himself on the eve of battle for the
forthcoming
struggle by opening his veins." Helene Stöcker,
likewise, reckons
motherhood as one of the demands, one of the growing
demands
indeed, which women now make. "If, to-day," she says (in the
Preface to _Liebe und die Frauen_, 1906), "all the good things of
life are claimed even for women--intellectual
training, pecuniary
independence, a happy vocation in life, a respected
social
position--and at the same time, as equally matter-
of-course, and
equally necessary, marriage and child, that demand
no longer
sounds, as it sounded a few years ago, the voice of
a preacher in
the wilderness."
The degradation to which motherhood has, in the eyes
of many,
fallen, is due partly to the tendency to deprive
women of any
voice in the question, and partly to what H.G. Wells
calls
(_Socialism and the Family_, 1906) "the monstrous absurdity of
women discharging their supreme social function,
bearing and
rearing children, in their spare time, as it were,
while they
'earn their living' by contributing some half