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Title: The Task of Social Hygiene
Author: Havelock Ellis
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THE TASK OF SOCIAL HYGIENE
* * * * *
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY
OF SEX. SIX VOLS.
THE NEW SPIRIT
AFFIRMATIONS
MAN AND WOMAN
THE CRIMINAL
THE WORLD OF DREAMS
THE SOUL OF SPAIN
IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTS
ESSAYS IN WAR-TIME. ETC.
* * * * *
THE TASK OF SOCIAL HYGIENE
by
HAVELOCK ELLIS
Author of "The Soul of Spain"; "The World of Dreams"; etc.
Boston and New York
Houghton Mifflin Company
1916
Printed in Great Britain.
PREFACE
The study of social hygiene means the study of those things which
concern the welfare of human beings living in societies. There can,
therefore, be no study more widely important or more generally
interesting. I fear, however, that by many persons social hygiene is
vaguely regarded either as a mere extension of sanitary science, or else
as an effort to set up an intolerable bureaucracy to oversee every
action of our lives, and perhaps even to breed us as cattle are bred.
That is certainly not the point of view from which this book has been
written. Plato and Rabelais, Campanella and More, have been among those
who announced the principles of social hygiene here set forth. There
must be a social order, all these great pioneers recognized, but the
health of society, like the health of the body, is marked by expansion
as much as by restriction, and, the striving for order is only justified
because without order there can be no freedom. If it were not the
mission of social hygiene to bring a new joy and a new freedom into life
I should not have concerned myself with the writing of this book.
When we thus contemplate the process of social hygiene, we are no longer
in danger of looking upon it as an artificial interference with Nature.
It is in the Book of Nature, as Campanella put it, that the laws of
life and of government are to be read. Or, as Quesnel said two centuries
ago, more precisely for our present purpose, "Nature is universal
hygiene." All animals are scrupulous in hygiene; the elaboration of
hygiene moves _pari passu_ with the rank of a species in intelligence.
Even the cockroach, which lives on what we call filth, spends the
greater part of its time in the cultivation of personal cleanliness. And
all social hygiene, in its fullest sense, is but an increasingly complex
and extended method of purification--the purification of the conditions
of life by sound legislation, the purification of our own minds by
better knowledge, the purification of our hearts by a growing sense of
responsibility, the purification of the race itself by an enlightened
eugenics, consciously aiding Nature in her manifest effort to embody new
ideals of life. It was not Man, but Nature, who realized the daring and
splendid idea--risky as it was--of placing the higher anthropoids on
their hind limbs and so liberating their fore-limbs in the service of
their nimble and aspiring brains. We may humbly follow in the same path,
liberating latent forces of life and suppressing those which no longer
serve the present ends of life. For, as Shakespeare said, when in _The
Winter's Tale_ he set forth a luminous philosophy of social hygiene and
applied it to eugenics,
"Nature is made better by no mean
But Nature makes that mean ...
This is an art
Which does mend Nature, change it rather, but
The art itself is Nature."
In whatever way it may be understood, however, social hygiene is now very
much to the front of people's minds. The present volume, I wish to make
clear, has not been hastily written to meet any real or supposed demand.
It has slowly grown during a period of nearly twenty-five years, and it
expresses an attitude which is implicit or explicit in the whole of my
work. By some readers, doubtless, it will be seen to constitute an
extension in various directions of the arguments developed in the larger
work on "Sex in Relation to Society," which is the final volume of my
_Studies in the Psychology of Sex_. The book I now bring forward may,
however, be more properly regarded as a presentation of the wider scheme
of social reform out of which the more special sex studies have
developed. We are faced to-day by the need for vast and complex changes
in social organization. In these changes the welfare of individuals and
the welfare of communities are alike concerned. Moreover, they are
matters which are not confined to the affairs of this nation or of that
nation, but of the whole family of nations participating in the
fraternity of modern progress.
The word "progress," indeed, which falls so easily from our lips is not
a word which any serious writer should use without precaution. The
conception of "progress" is a useful conception in so far as it binds
together those who are working for common ends, and stimulates that
perpetual slight movement in which life consists. But there is no
general progress in Nature, nor any unqualified progress; that is to
say, that there is no progress for all groups along the line, and that
even those groups which progress pay the price of their progress. It was
so even when our anthropoid ancestors rose to the erect position; that
was "progress," and it gained us the use of hands. But it lost us our
tails, and much else that is more regrettable than we are always able to
realize. There is no general and ever-increasing evolution towards
perfection. "Existence is realized in its perfection under whatever
aspect it is manifested," says Jules de Gaultier. Or, as Whitman put it,
"There will never be any more perfection than there is now." We cannot
expect an increased power of growth and realization in existence, as a
whole, leading to any general perfection; we can only expect to see the
triumph of individuals, or of groups of individuals, carrying out their
own conceptions along special lines, every perfection so attained
involving, on its reverse side, the acquirement of an imperfection. It
is in this sense, and in this sense only, that progress is possible. We
need not fear that we shall ever achieve the stagnant immobility of a
general perfection.
The problems of progress we are here concerned with are such as the
civilized world, as represented by some of its foremost individuals or
groups of individuals, is just now waking up to grapple with. No doubt
other problems might be added, and the addition give a greater semblance
of completion to this book. I have selected those which seem to me very
essential, very fundamental. The questions of social hygiene, as here
understood, go to the heart of life. It is the task of this hygiene not
only to make sewers, but to re-make love, and to do both in the same
large spirit of human fellowship, to ensure finer individual development
and a larger social organization. At the one end social hygiene may be
regarded as simply the extension of an elementary sanitary code; at the
other end it seems to some to have in it the glorious freedom of a new
religion. The majority of people, probably, will be content to admit
that we have here a scheme of serious social reform which every man and
woman will soon be called upon to take some share in.
HAVELOCK ELLIS.
CONTENTS
I.--INTRODUCTION
PAGE
The aim of Social Hygiene--Social Reform--The Rise of Social Reform out
of English Industrialism--The Four Stages of Social Reform--(1) The
Stage of Sanitation--(2) Factory Legislation--(3) The Extension of the
Scope of Education--(4) Puericulture--The Scientific Evolution
corresponding to these Stages--Social Reform only Touched the Conditions
of Life--Yet Social Reform Remains highly Necessary--The Question of
Infantile Mortality and the Quality of the Race--The Better Organization
of Life Involved by Social Hygiene--Its Insistence on the Quality rather
than on the Conditions of Life--The Control of Reproduction--The Fall of
the Birth-rate in Relation to the Quality of the Population--The
Rejuvenation of a Society--The Influence of Culture and Refinement on a
Race--Eugenics--The Regeneration of the Race--The Problem of
Feeble-mindedness--The Methods of Eugenics--Some of the Problems which
Face us 1
II.--THE CHANGING STATUS OF WOMEN
The Origin of the Woman Movement--Mary Wollstonecraft--George
Sand--Robert Owen--William Thompson--John Stuart Mill--The Modern
Growth of Social Cohesion--The Growth of Industrialism--Its Influence in
Woman's Sphere of Work--The Education of Women--Co-education--The Woman
Question and Sexual Selection--Significance of Economic
Independence--The State Regulation of Marriage--The Future of
Marriage--Wilhelm von Humboldt--Social Equality of Women--The
Reproduction of the Race as a Function of Society--Women and the Future
of Civilization 49
III.--THE NEW ASPECT OF THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT
Eighteenth-Century France--Pioneers of the Woman's Movement--The Growth
of the Woman's Suffrage Movement--The Militant Activities of the
Suffragettes--Their Services and Disservices to the Cause--Advantages of
Women's Suffrage--Sex Questions in Germany--Bebel--The Woman's Rights
Movement in Germany--The Development of Sexual Science in Germany--The
Movement for the Protection of Motherhood--Ellen Key--The Question of
Illegitimacy--Eugenics--Women as Law-makers in the Home 67
IV.--THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN IN RELATION TO ROMANTIC LOVE
The Absence of Romantic Love in Classic Civilization--Marriage as a
Duty--The Rise of Romantic Love in the Roman Empire--The Influence of
Christianity--The Attitude of Chivalry--The Troubadours--The Courts of
Love--The Influence of the Renaissance--Conventional Chivalry and Modern
Civilization--The Woman Movement--The Modern Woman's Equality of Rights
and Responsibilities excludes Chivalry--New Forms of Romantic Love still
remain possible--Love as the Inspiration of Social Hygiene 113
V.--THE SIGNIFICANCE OF A FALLING BIRTH-RATE
The Fall of the Birth-rate in Europe generally--In England--In
Germany--In the United States--In Canada--In Australasia--"Crude"
Birth-rate and "Corrected" Birth-rate--The Connection between High
Birth-rate and High Death-rate--"Natural Increase" measured by Excess
of Births over Deaths--The Measure of National Well-being--The
Example of Russia--Japan--China--The Necessity of viewing the
Question from a wide Standpoint--The Prevalence of Neo-Malthusian
Methods--Influence of the Roman Catholic Church--Other Influences
lowering the Birth-rate--Influence of Postponement of Marriage--Relation
of the Birth-rate to Commercial and Industrial Activity--Illustrated
by Russia, Hungary, and Australia--The Relation of Prosperity to
Fertility--The Social Capillarity Theory--Divergence of the Birth-rate
and the Marriage-rate--Marriage-rate and the Movement of
Prices--Prosperity and Civilization--Fertility among Savages--The
lesser fertility of Urban Populations--Effect of Urbanization on
Physical Development--Why Prosperity fails permanently to increase
Fertility--Prosperity creates Restraints on Fertility--The process
of Civilization involves Decreased Fertility--In this Respect it is
a Continuation of Zoological Evolution--Large Families as a Stigma
of Degeneration--The Decreased Fertility of Civilization a General
Historical Fact--The Ideals of Civilization to-day--The East and
the West 134
VI.--EUGENICS AND LOVE
Eugenics and the Decline of the Birth-rate--Quantity and Quality in the
Production of Children--Eugenic Sexual Selection--The Value of
Pedigrees--Their Scientific Significance--The Systematic Record of
Personal Data--The Proposal for Eugenic Certificates--St. Valentine's
Day and Sexual Selection--Love and Reason--Love Ruled by Natural
Law--Eugenic Selection not opposed to Love--No Need for Legal
Compulsion--Medicine in Relation to Marriage. 193
VII.--RELIGION AND THE CHILD
Religious Education in Relation to Social Hygiene and to Psychology--The
Psychology of the Child--The Contents of Children's Minds--The
Imagination of Children--How far may Religion be assimilated by
Children?--Unfortunate Results of Early Religious Instruction--Puberty
the Age for Religious Education--Religion as an Initiation into a
Mystery--Initiation among Savages--The Christian Sacraments--The Modern
Tendency as regards Religious Instruction--Its Advantages--Children and
Fairy Tales--The Bible of Childhood--Moral Training 217
VIII.--THE PROBLEM OF SEXUAL HYGIENE
The New Movement for giving Sexual Instruction to Children--The Need of
such a Movement--Contradictions involved by the Ancient Policy of
Silence--Errors of the New Policy--The Need of Teaching the Teacher--The
Need of Training the Parents--And of Scientifically equipping the
Physician--Sexual Hygiene and Society--The far-reaching Effects of
Sexual Hygiene 244
IX.--IMMORALITY AND THE LAW
Social Hygiene and Legal Compulsion--The Binding Force of Custom among
Savages--The Dissolving Influence of Civilization--The Distinction
between Immorality and Criminality--Adultery as a Crime--The Tests of
Criminality--National Differences in laying down the Boundary between
Criminal and Immoral Acts--France--Germany--England--The United
States--Police Administration--Police Methods in the United
States--National Differences in the Regulation of the Trade in
Alcohol--Prohibition in the United States--Origin of the American Method
of Dealing with Immorality--Russia--Historical Fluctuations in Methods
of Dealing with Immorality and Prostitution--Homosexuality--Holland--The
Age of Consent--Moral Legislation in England--In the United States--The
Raines Law--America Attempts to Suppress Prostitution--Their
Futility--German Methods of Regulating Prostitution--The Sound Method of
Approaching Immorality--Training in Sexual Hygiene--Education in
Personal and Social Responsibility 258
X.--THE WAR AGAINST WAR
Why the Problem of War is specially urgent To-day--The Beneficial
Effects of War in Barbarous Ages--Civilization renders the Ultimate
Disappearance of War Inevitable--The Introduction of Law in disputes
between Individuals involves the Introduction of Law in disputes between
Nations--But there must be Force behind Law--Henry IV's Attempt to
Confederate Europe--Every International Tribunal of Arbitration must be
able to Enforce its decisions--The Influences making for the Abolition
of Warfare--(1) Growth of International Opinion--(2) International
Financial Development--(3) The Decreasing Pressure of Population--(4)
The Natural Exhaustion of the Warlike Spirit--(5) The Spread of
Anti-military Doctrines--(6) The Over-growth of Armaments--(7) The
Dominance of Social Reform--War Incompatible with an Advanced
Civilization--Nations as Trustees for Humanity--The Impossibility of
Disarmament--The Necessity of Force to ensure Peace--The Federated State
of the Future--The Decay of War still leaves the Possibilities of Daring
and Heroism 311
XI.--THE PROBLEM OF AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE
Early Attempts to construct an International Language--The Urgent Need
of an Auxiliary Language To-day--Volapük--The Claims of
Spanish--Latin--The Claims of English--Its Disadvantages--The Claims of
French--Its Disadvantages--The Modern Growth of National Feeling opposed
to Selection of a Natural Language--Advantages of an Artificial
Language--Demands it must Fulfil--Esperanto--Its Threatened
Disruption--The International Association for the Adoption of an
Auxiliary International Language--The First Step to Take 349
XII.--INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIALISM
Social Hygiene in Relation to the Alleged Opposition between Socialism
and Individualism--The Two Parties in Politics--The Relation of
Conservatism and Radicalism to Socialism and Individualism--The Basis of
Socialism--The Basis of Individualism--The seeming Opposition between
Socialism and Individualism merely a Division of Labour--Both Socialism
and Individualism equally Necessary--Not only Necessary, but
Indispensable to each other--The Conflict between the Advocates of
Environment and Heredity--A New Embodiment of the supposed Conflict
between Socialism and Individualism--The place of Eugenics--Social
Hygiene ultimately one with the Hygiene of the Soul--The Function of
Utopias 381
INDEX 407
THE TASK OF SOCIAL HYGIENE
I
INTRODUCTION
The Aim of Social Hygiene--Social Reform--The Rise of Social Reform
out of English Industrialism--The Four Stages of Social Reform--(1)
The Stage of Sanitation--(2) Factory Legislation--(3) The Extension
of the Scope of Education--(4) Puericulture--The Scientific
Evolution corresponding to these Stages--Social Reform only Touched
the Conditions of Life--Yet Social Reform Remains highly
Necessary--The Question of Infantile Mortality and the Quality of
the Race--The Better Organization of Life Involved by Social
Hygiene--Its Insistence on the Quality rather than on the
Conditions of Life--The Control of Reproduction--The Fall of the
Birth-rate in Relation to the Quality of the Population--The
Rejuvenation of a Society--The Influence of Culture and Refinement
on a Race--Eugenics--The Regeneration of the Race--The Problem of
Feeble-Mindedness--The Methods of Eugenics--Some of the Problems
which Face us.
Social Hygiene, as it will be here understood, may be said to be a
development, and even a transformation, of what was formerly known as
Social Reform. In that transformation it has undergone two fundamental
changes. In the first place, it is no longer merely an attempt to deal
with the conditions under which life is lived, seeking to treat bad
conditions as they occur, without going to their source, but it aims at
prevention. It ceases to be simply a reforming of forms, and approaches
in a comprehensive manner not only the conditions of life, but life
itself. In the second place, its method is no longer haphazard, but
organized and systematic, being based on a growing knowledge of those
biological sciences which were scarcely in their infancy when the era of
social reform began. Thus social hygiene is at once more radical and
more scientific than the old conception of social reform. It is the
inevitable method by which at a certain stage civilization is compelled
to continue its own course, and to preserve, perhaps to elevate, the
race.
The era of social reform followed on the rise of modern industrialism,
and, no doubt largely on this account, although an international
movement, it first became definite and self-conscious in England. There
were perhaps other reasons why it should have been in the first place
specially prominent in England. When at the end of the seventeenth
century, Muralt, a highly intelligent Swiss gentleman, visited England,
and wrote his by no means unsympathetic _Lettres sur les Anglais_, he
was struck by a curious contradiction in the English character. They are
a good-natured people, he observed, very rich, so well-nourished that
sometimes they die of obesity, and they detest cruelty so much that by
royal proclamation it is ordained that the fish and the ducks of the
ponds should be duly and properly fed. Yet he found that this
good-natured, rich, cruelty-hating nation systematically allowed the
prisoners in their gaols to die of starvation. "The great cruelty of
the English," Muralt remarks, "lies in permitting evil rather than in
doing it."[1] The root of the apparent contradiction lay clearly in a
somewhat excessive independence and devotion to liberty. We give a man
full liberty, they seem to have said, to work, to become rich, to grow
fat. But if he will not work, let him starve. In that point of view
there were involved certain fallacies, which became clearer during the
course of social evolution.
It was obvious, indeed, that such an attitude, while highly favourable
to individual vigour and independence, and not incompatible with fairly
healthy social life under the conditions which prevailed at the time,
became disastrous in the era of industrialism. The conditions of
industrial life tore up the individual from the roots by which he
normally received strength, and crowded the workers together in masses,
thus generating a confusion which no individual activity could grapple
with. So it was that the very spirit which, under the earlier
conditions, made for good now made for evil. To stand by and applaud the
efforts of the individual who was perhaps slowly sinking deeper and
deeper into a miry slough of degradation began to seem an even
diabolical attitude. The maxim of _laissez-faire_, which had once stood
for the whole unfettered action of natural activities in life, began to
be viewed with horror and contempt. It was realized that there must be
an intelligent superintendence of social conditions, humane regulation,
systematic organization. The very intensity of the evils which the
English spirit produced led to a reaction by which that spirit, while
doubtless remaining the same at heart, took on a different form, and
manifested its energy in a new direction.
The modern industrial era, replacing domestic industry by collective
work carried out by "hands" in factories, began in the eighteenth
century. The era of social reform was delayed until the second quarter
of the nineteenth century. It has proceeded by four successively
progressive stages, each stage supplementing, rather than supplanting,
the stage that preceded it. In 1842 Sir Edwin Chadwick wrote an official
Report on the _Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great
Britain_, in which was clearly presented for the first time a vivid,
comprehensive, and authoritative picture of the incredibly filthy
conditions under which the English labouring classes lived. The times
were ripe for this Report. It attracted public attention, and exerted an
important influence. Its appearance marks the first stage of social
reform, which was mainly a sanitary effort to clear away the gross filth
from our cities, to look after the cleansing, lighting, and policing of
the streets, to create a drainage system, to improve dwellings, and in
these ways to combat disease and to lower the very high death-rate.
At an early stage, however, it began to be seen that this process of
sanitation, necessary as it had become, was far too crude and elementary
to achieve the ends sought. It was not enough to improve the streets, or
even to regulate the building of dwellings. It was clearly necessary to
regulate also the conditions of work of the people who lived in those
streets and dwellings. Thus it was that the scheme of factory
legislation was initiated. Rules were made as to the hours of labour,
more especially as regards women and children, for whom, moreover,
certain specially dangerous or unhealthy occupations were forbidden, and
an increasingly large number of avocations were brought under Government
inspection. This second stage of social reform encountered a much more
strenuous opposition than the first stage. The regulation of the order
and cleanliness of the streets was obviously necessary, and it had
indeed been more or less enforced even in medieval times;[2] but the
regulation of the conditions of work in the interests of the worker was
a more novel proceeding, and it appeared to clash both with the
interests of the employers and the ancient principles of English freedom
and independence, behind which the employers consequently sheltered
themselves. The early attempts to legislate on these lines were thus
fruitless. It was not until a distinguished aristocratic philanthropist
of great influence, the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, took up the
question, that factory legislation began to be accepted. It continues to
develop even to-day, ever enlarging the sphere of its action, and now
meeting with no opposition. But, in England, at all events, its
acceptance marks a memorable stage in the growth of the national spirit.
It was no longer easy and natural for the Englishmen to look on at
suffering without interference. It began to be recognized that it was
perfectly legitimate, and even necessary, to put a curb on the freedom
and independence which involved suffering to others.
But as the era of factory legislation became established, a further
advance was seen to be necessary. Factory legislation had forbidden the
child to work. But the duty of the community towards the child, the
citizen of the future, was evidently by no means covered by this purely
negative step. The child must be prepared to take his future part in
life, in the first place by education. The nationalization of education
in England dates from 1870. But during the subsequent half century
"education" has come to mean much more than mere instruction; it now
covers a certain amount of provision for meals when necessary, the
enforcement of cleanliness, the care of defective conditions, inborn or
acquired, with special treatment for mentally defective children, an
ever-increasing amount of medical inspection and supervision, while it
is beginning to include arrangements for placing the child in work
suited to his capacities when he leaves school.
During the past ten years the movement of social reform has entered a
fourth stage. The care of the child during his school-days was seen to
be insufficient; it began too late, when probably the child's fate for
life was already decided. It was necessary to push the process further
back, to birth and even to the stage before birth, by directing social
care to the infant, and by taking thought of the mother. This
consideration has led to a whole series of highly important and fruitful
measures which are only beginning to develop, although they have already
proved very beneficial. The immediate notification to the authorities of
a child's birth, and the institution of Health Visitors to ascertain
what is being done for the infant's well-being, and to aid the mother
with advice, have certainly been a large factor in the recent reduction
in the infantile death-rate in England.[3]
The care of the infant has indeed now become a new applied science, the
science of puericulture. Professor Budin of Paris may fairly be regarded
as the founder of puericulture by the establishment in Paris, in 1892,
of Infant Consultations, to which mothers were encouraged to bring their
babies to be weighed and examined, any necessary advice being given
regarding the care of the baby. The mothers are persuaded to suckle
their infants if possible, and if their own health permits. For the
cases in which suckling is undesirable or impossible, Budin established
Milk Depôts, where pure milk is supplied at a low price or freely.
Infant Consultations and Milk Depôts are now becoming common everywhere.
A little later than Budin, another distinguished French physician,
Pinard, carried puericulture a step further back, but a very important
step, by initiating a movement for the care of the pregnant woman.
Pinard and his pupils have shown by a number of detailed investigations
that the children born to working mothers who rest during the last three
months of pregnancy, are to a marked extent larger and finer than the
children of those mothers who enjoy no such period of rest, even though
the mothers themselves may be equally robust and healthy in both cases.
Moreover, it is found that premature birth, one of the commonest
accidents of modern life, tends to be prevented by such rest. The
children of mothers who rest enjoy on the average three weeks longer
development in the womb than the children of the mothers who do not
rest, and this prolonged ante-natal development cannot fail to be a
benefit for the whole of the child's subsequent life. The movement
started by Pinard, though strictly a continuation of the great movement
for the improvement of the conditions of life, takes us as far back as
we are able to go on these lines, and has in it the promise of an
immense benefit to human efficiency.
In connection with the movement of puericulture initiated by Budin and
Pinard must be mentioned the institution of Schools for Mothers, for it
is closely associated with the aims of puericulture. The School for
Mothers arose in Belgium, a little later than the activities of Budin
and Pinard commenced. About 1900 a young Socialist doctor of Ghent, Dr.
Miele, started the first school of this kind, with girls of from twelve
to sixteen years of age as students and assistants. The School
eventually included as many as twelve different services, among these
being dispensaries for mothers, a mothers' friendly society, milk depôts
both for babies and nursing mothers, health talks to mothers with
demonstrations, courses on puericulture (including anatomy, physiology,
preparation of foods, weighing, etc.) to girls between fourteen and
eighteen, who afterwards become eligible for appointment as paid
assistants.[4] In 1907 Schools for Mothers were introduced into England,
at first under the auspices of Dr. Sykes, Medical Officer of Health for
St. Pancras, London. Such Schools are now spreading everywhere. In the
end they will probably be considered necessary centres for any national
system of puericulture. Every girl at the end of her school life should
be expected to pass through a certain course of training at a School for
Mothers. It would be the technical school for the working-class mother,
while such a course would be invaluable for any girl, whatever her
social class, even if she is never called to be a mother herself or to
have the care of children.
The great movement of social reform during the nineteenth century, we
thus see, has moved in four stages, each of which has reinforced rather
than replaced that which went before: (1) the effort to cleanse the
gross filth of cities and to remedy obvious disorder by systematic
attention to scavenging, drainage, the supply of water and of artificial
light, as well as by improved policing; (2) the great system of factory
legislation for regulating the conditions of work, and to some extent
restraining the work of women and of children; (3) the introduction of
national systems of education, and the gradual extension of the idea of
education to cover far more than mere instruction; and (4), most
fundamental of all and last to appear, the effort to guard the child
before the school age, even at birth, even before birth, by bestowing
due care on the future mother.[5]
It may be pointed out that this movement of practical social reform has
been accompanied, stimulated, and guided by a corresponding movement in
the sciences which in their application are indispensable to the
progress of civilized social reform. There has been a process of mutual
action and reaction between science and practice. The social movement
has stimulated the development of abstract science, and the new progress
in science has enabled further advances to be made in social practice.
The era of expansion in sanitation was the era of development in
chemistry and physics, which alone enabled a sound system of sanitation
to be developed. The fight against disease would have been impossible
but for bacteriology. The new care for human life, and for the
protection of its source, is associated with fresh developments of
biological science. Sociological observations and speculation, including
economics, are intimately connected with the efforts of social reform to
attain a broad, sound, and truly democratic basis.[6]
When we survey this movement as a whole, we have to recognize that it is
exclusively concerned with the improvement of the conditions of life. It
makes no attempt to influence either the quantity or the quality of
life.[7] It may sometimes have been carried out with the assumption that
to improve the conditions of life is, in some way or other, to improve
the quality of life itself. But it accepted the stream of life as it
found it, and while working to cleanse the banks of the stream it made
no attempt to purify the stream itself.
It must, however, be remembered that the arguments which, especially
nowadays, are brought against the social reform of the condition of
life, will not bear serious examination. It is said, for instance, or at
all events implied, that we need bestow very little care on the
conditions of life because such care can have no permanently beneficial
effect on the race, since acquired characters, for the most part, are
not transmitted to descendants. But to assume that social reform is
unnecessary because it is not inherited is altogether absurd. The people
who make this assumption would certainly not argue that it is useless
for them to satisfy their own hunger and thirst, because their children
will not thereby be safeguarded from experiencing hunger and thirst. Yet
the needs which the movement of organized social reform seeks to satisfy
are precisely on a level with, and indeed to some extent identical with,
the needs of hunger and thirst. The impulse and the duty which move
every civilized community to elaborate and gratify its own social needs
to the utmost are altogether independent of the race, and would not
cease to exist even in a community vowed to celibacy or the most
absolute Neo-Malthusianism. Nor, again, must it be said that social
reform destroys the beneficial results of natural selection.
Here, indeed, we encounter a disputed point, and it may be admitted that
the precise data for absolute demonstration in one direction or the
other cannot yet be found. Whenever human beings breed in reckless and
unrestrained profusion--as is the case under some conditions before a
free and self-conscious civilization is attained--there is an immense
infantile mortality. It is claimed, on the one hand, that this is
beneficial, and need not be interfered with. The weak are killed off,
it is said, and the strong survive; there is a process of natural
survival of the fittest. That is true. But it is equally true, as has
also been clearly seen on the other hand, that though the relatively
strongest survive, their relative strength has been impaired by the very
influences which have proved altogether fatal to their weaker brethren.
There is an immense infantile mortality in Russia. Yet, notwithstanding
any resulting "survival of the fittest," Russia is far more ravaged by
disease than Norway, where infantile mortality is low. "A high infantile
mortality," as George Carpenter, a great authority on the diseases of
childhood, remarks, "denotes a far higher infantile deterioration rate";
or, as another doctor puts it, "the dead baby is next of kin to the
diseased baby," The protection of the weak, so frequently condemned by
some Neo-Darwinians, is thus in reality, as Goldscheid terms it, "the
protection of the strong from degeneration."
There is, however, more to be said. Not only must an undue struggle with
unfavourable conditions enfeeble the strong as well as kill the feeble;
it also imposes an intolerable burden upon these enfeebled survivors.
The process of destruction is not sudden, it is gradual. It is a
long-drawn-out process. It involves the multiplication of the diseased,
the maimed, the feeble-minded, of paupers and lunatics and criminals.
Even natural selection thus includes the need for protecting the feeble,
and so renders urgent the task of social reform, while the more
thoroughly this task is carried out with the growth of civilization,
the more stupendous and overwhelming the task becomes.
It is thus that civilization, at a certain point in its course, renders
inevitable the appearance of that wider and deeper organization of life
which in the present volume we are concerned with under the name of
Social Hygiene. That movement is far from being an abrupt or
revolutionary manifestation in the ordinary progress of social growth.
As we have seen, social reform during the past eighty years may be said
to have proceeded in four successive stages, each of which has involved
a nearer approach to the sources of life. The fourth stage, which in its
beginnings dates only from the last years of the nineteenth century,
takes us to the period before birth, and is concerned with the care of
the child in the mother's womb. The next stage cannot fail to take us to
the very source of life itself, lifting us beyond the task of purifying
the conditions, and laying on us the further task of regulating the
quantity and raising the quality of life at its very source. The duty of
purifying, ordering, and consolidating the banks of the stream must
still remain.[8] But when we are able to control the stream at its
source we are able to some extent to prevent the contamination of that
stream by filth, and ensure that its muddy floods shall not sweep away
the results of our laborious work on the banks. Our sense of social
responsibility is developing into a sense of racial responsibility, and
that development is expressed in the nature of the tasks of Social
Hygiene which now lie before us.
It is the control of the reproduction of the race which renders possible
the new conception of Social Hygiene. We have seen that the gradual
process of social reform during the first three quarters of the
nineteenth century, by successive stages of movement towards the sources
of life, finally reached the moment of conception. The first result of
reform at this point was that procreation became a deliberate act. Up
till then the method of propagating the race was the same as that which
savages have carried on during thousands of years, the chief difference
being that whereas savages have frequently sought to compensate their
recklessness by destroying their inferior offspring, we had accepted all
the offspring, good, bad, and indifferent, produced by our
indiscriminate recklessness, shielding ourselves by a false theology.
Children "came," and their parents disclaimed all responsibility for
their coming. The children were "sent by God," and if they all turned
out to be idiots, the responsibility was God's. But when it became
generally realized that it was possible to limit offspring without
interfering with conjugal life a step of immense importance was
achieved. It became clear to all that the Divine force works through us,
and that we are not entitled to cast the burden of our evil actions on
any Higher Power. Marriage no longer fatally involved an endless
procession of children who, in so far as they survived at all, were in a
large number of cases doomed to disease, neglect, misery, and ignorance.
The new Social Hygiene was for the first time rendered possible.
It was in France during the first half of the nineteenth century that
the control of reproduction first began to become a social habit. In
Sweden and in Denmark, the fall in the birth-rate, though it has been
irregular, may be said to have begun in 1860. It was not until about the
year 1876 that, in so far as we may judge by the arrest of the
birth-rate, the movement began to spread to Europe generally. In England
it is usual to associate this change with a famous prosecution which
brought a knowledge of the means of preventing conception to the whole
population of Great Britain. Undoubtedly this prosecution was an
important factor in the movement, but we cannot doubt that, even if the
prosecution had not taken place, the course of social progress must
still have pursued the same course. It is noteworthy that it was about
this same period, in various European countries, that the tide turned,
and the excessively high birth-rate began to fall.[9] Recklessness was
giving place to foresight and self-control. Such foresight and
self-control are of the essence of civilization.[10]
It cannot be disputed that the transformation by which the propagation
of the race became deliberate and voluntary has not been established in
social custom without a certain amount of protestation from various
sides. No social change, however beneficial, ever is established without
such protestation, which may, therefore, be regarded as an inevitable
and probably a salutary part of social change. Even some would-be
scientific persons, with a display of elaborate statistics, set forth
various alarmistic doctrines. If, said these persons, this new movement
goes on at the present pace, and if all other conditions remain
unchanged, then all sorts of terrible results will ensue. But the
alarming conclusion failed to ensue, and for a very sufficient reason.
The assumed premises of the argument were unsound. Nothing ever goes on
at the same pace, nor do all other conditions ever remain unchanged.
The world is a living fire, as Heraclitus long ago put it. All things
are in perpetual flux. Life is a process of perpetual movement. It is
idle to bid the world stand still, and then to argue about the
consequences. The world will not stand still, it is for ever revolving,
for ever revealing some new facet that had not been allowed for in the
neatly arranged mechanism of the statistician.
It is perhaps unnecessary to dwell on a point which is now at last, one
may hope, becoming clear to most intelligent persons. But I may perhaps
be allowed to refer in passing to an argument that has been brought
forward with the wearisome iteration which always marks the progress of
those who are feeble in argument. The good stocks of upper social class
are decreasing in fertility, it is said; the bad stocks of lower social
class are not decreasing; therefore the bad stocks are tending to
replace the good stocks.[11]
It must, however, be pointed out that, even assuming that the facts are
as stated; it is a hazardous assumption that the best stocks are
necessarily the stocks of high social class. In the main no doubt this
is so, but good stocks are nevertheless so widely spread through all
classes--such good stocks in the lower social classes being probably the
most resistent to adverse conditions--that we are not entitled to regard
even a slightly greater net increase of the lower social classes as an
unmitigated evil. It may be that, as Mercier has expressed it, "we have
to regard a civilized community somewhat in the light of a lamp, which
burns at the top and is replenished from the bottom."[12]
The soundness of a stock, and its aptitude for performing efficiently
the functions of its own social sphere, cannot, indeed, be accurately
measured by any tendency to rise into a higher social sphere. On the
whole, from generation to generation, the men of a good stock remain
within their own social sphere, whether high or low, adequately
performing their functions in that sphere, from generation to
generation. They remain, we may say, in that social stratum of which the
specific gravity is best suited for their existence.[13]
Yet, undoubtedly, from time to time, there is a slight upward social
tendency, due in most cases to the exceptional energy and ability of
some individual who succeeds in permanently lifting his family into a
slightly higher social stratum.[14] Such a process has always taken
place, in the past even more conspicuously than in the present. The
Normans who came over to England with William the Conqueror and
constituted the proud English nobility were simply a miscellaneous set
of adventurers, professional fighting men, of unknown, and no doubt for
the most part undistinguished, lineage. William the Conqueror himself
was the son of a woman of the people. The Catholic Church founded no
families, but its democratic constitution opened a career to men of all
classes, and the most brilliant sons of the Church were often of the
lowliest social rank. We should not, therefore, say that the bad stocks
are replacing the good stocks. There is not the slightest evidence for
any such theory. All that we are entitled to say is that when in the
upward progression of a community the vanishing point of culture and
refinement is attained the bearers of that culture and refinement die
off as naturally and inevitably as flowers in autumn, and from their
roots spring up new and more vigorous shoots to replace them and to pass
in their turn through the same stages, with that perpetual slight
novelty in which lies the secret of life, as well as of art. An
aristocracy which is merely an aristocracy because it is "old"--whether
it is an aristocracy of families, or of races, or of species--has
already ceased to be an aristocracy in any sound meaning of the term. We
need not regret its disappearance.
Do not, therefore, let us waste our time in crying over the dead roses
of the summer that is past. There is something morbid in the perpetual
groaning over that inevitable decay which is itself a part of all life.
Such a perpetual narrow insistence on one aspect of life is scarcely
sane. One suspects that these people are themselves of those stocks over
whose fate they grieve. Let us, therefore, mercifully leave them to
manure their dead roses in peace. They will soon be forgotten. The world
is for ever dying. The world is also for ever bursting with life. The
spring song of _Sursum corda_ easily overwhelms the dying autumnal wails
of the _Dies Iræ_.
It would thus appear that, even apart from any deliberate restraint from
procreation, as a family attains the highest culture and refinement
which civilization can yield, that family tends to die out, at all
events in the male line.[15] This is, for instance, the result which
Fahlbeck has reached in his valuable demographic study of the Swedish
nobility, _Der Adel Schwedens_. "Apparently," says Fahlbeck, "the
greater demands on nervous and intellectual force which the culture and
refinement of the upper classes produce are chiefly responsible for
this. For these are the two personal factors by which those classes are
distinguished from the lower classes: high education and refinement in
tastes and habits. The first involves predominant activity of the brain,
the last a heightened sensitiveness in all departments of nervous life.
In both respects, therefore, there is increased work for the nervous
system, and this is compensated in the other vital functions, especially
reproduction. Man cannot achieve everything; what he gains on one side
he loses on the other." We should do well to hold these wise words in
mind when we encounter those sciolists who in the presence of the finest
and rarest manifestations of civilizations, can only talk of race
"decay." A female salmon, it is estimated, lays about nine hundred eggs
for every pound of her own weight, and she may weigh fifty pounds. The
progeny of Shakespeare and Goethe, such as it was, disappeared in the
very centuries in which these great men themselves died. At the present
stage of civilization we are somewhat nearer to Shakespeare and Goethe
than to the salmon. We must set our ideals towards a very different
direction from that which commends itself to our Salmonidian sciolists.
"Increase and multiply" was the legendary injunction uttered on the
threshold of an empty world. It is singularly out of place in an age in
which the earth and the sea, if not indeed the very air, swarm with
countless myriads of undistinguished and indistinguishable human
creatures, until the beauty of the world is befouled and the glory of
the Heavens bedimmed. To stem back that tide is the task now imposed on
our heroism, to elevate and purify and refine the race, to introduce
the ideal of quality in place of the ideal of quantity which has run
riot so long, with the results we see. "As the Northern Saga tells that
Odin must sacrifice his eye to attain the higher wisdom," concludes
Fahlbeck, "so Man also, in order to win the treasures of culture and
refinement, must give not only his eye but his life, if not his own life
that of his posterity."[16] The vulgar aim of reckless racial fertility
is no longer within our reach and no longer commends itself as worthy.
It is not consonant with the stage of civilization we are at the moment
passing through. The higher task is now ours of the regeneration of the
race, or, if we wish to express that betterment less questionably, the
aggeneration of the race.[17]
The control of reproduction, we see, essential as it is, cannot by
itself carry far the betterment of the race, because it involves no
direct selection of stocks. Yet we have to remember that though this
control, with the limitation of offspring it involves, fails to answer
all the demands which Social Hygiene to-day makes of us, it yet achieves
much. It may not improve what we abstractly term the "race," but it
immensely improves the individuals of which the race is made up. Thus
the limitation of the family renders it possible to avoid the production
of undesired children. That in itself is an immense social gain, because
it tends to abolish excessive infantile mortality.[18] It means that
adequate care will be expended upon the children that are produced, and
that no children will be produced unless the parents are in a position
to provide for them.[19] Even the mere spacing out of the children in a
family, the larger interval between child-births, is a very great
advantage. The mother is no longer exhausted by perpetually bearing,
suckling, and tending babies, while the babies themselves are on the
average of better quality.[20] Thus the limitation of offspring, far from
being an egoistic measure, as some have foolishly supposed, is
imperatively demanded in the altruistic interests of the individuals
composing the race.
But the control of reproduction, enormously beneficial as it is even in
its most elementary shapes, mainly concerns us here because it furnishes
the essential condition for the development of Social Hygiene. The
control of reproduction renders possible, and leads on to, a wise
selection in reproduction. It is only by such selection of children to
be born that we can balance our indiscriminate care in the preservation
of all children that are born, a care which otherwise would become an
intolerable burden. It is only by such selection that we can work
towards the elimination of those stocks which fail to help us in the
tasks of our civilization to-day. It is only by such selection that we
can hope to fortify the stocks that are fitted for these tasks. More
than two centuries ago Steele playfully suggested that "one might wear
any passion out of a family by culture, as skilful gardeners blot a
colour out of a tulip that hurts its beauty."[21] The progress of
civilization, with the self-control it involves, has made it possible to
accept this suggestion seriously.[22] The difference is that whereas the
flowers of our gardens are bettered only by the control of an arbitrary
external will and intelligence, our human flowers may be bettered by an
intelligence and will, a finer sense of responsibility, developed within
themselves. Thus it is that human culture renders possible Social
Hygiene.
Three centuries ago an inspired monk set forth his ideal of an ennobled
world in _The City of the Sun_. Campanella wrote that prophetic book in
prison. But his spirit was unfettered, and his conception of human
society, though in daring it outruns all the visions we may compare it
with, is yet on the lines along which our civilization lies. In the City
of the Sun not only was the nobility of work, even mechanical
work,--which Plato rejected and More was scarcely conscious of,--for the
first time recognized, but the supreme impulse of procreation was
regarded as a sacred function, to be exercised in the light of
scientific knowledge. It was a public rather than a private duty,
because it concerned the interests of the race; only valorous and
high-spirited men ought to procreate, and it was held that the father
should bear the punishments inflicted on the son for faults due to his
failure by defects in generation.[23] Moreover, while unions not for the
end of procreation were in the City of the Sun left to the judgment of
the individuals alone concerned, it was not so with unions for the end
of procreation. These were arranged by the "great Master," a physician,
aided by the chief matrons, and the public exercises of the youths and
maidens, performed in a state of nakedness, were of assistance in
enabling unions to be fittingly made. No eugenist under modern
conditions of life proposes that unions should be arranged by a supreme
medical public official, though he might possibly regard such an
official, if divested of any compulsory powers, a kind of public trustee
for the race, as a useful institution. But it is easy to see that the
luminous conception of racial betterment which, since Galton rendered it
practicable, is now inspiring social progress, was already burning
brightly three centuries ago in the brain of this imprisoned Italian
monk. Just as Thomas More has been called the father of modern
Socialism, so Campanella may be said to be the prophet of modern
Eugenics.
By "Eugenics" is meant the scientific study of all the agencies by which
the human race may be improved, and the effort to give practical effect
to those agencies by conscious and deliberate action in favour of better
breeding. Even among savages eugenics may be said to exist, if only in
the crude and unscientific practice of destroying feeble, deformed, and
abnormal infants at birth. In civilized ages elaborate and more or less
scientific attempts are made by breeders of animals to improve the
stocks they breed, and their efforts have been crowned with much
success. The study of the same methods in their bearing on man proceeded
out of the Darwinian school of biology, and is especially associated
with the great name of Sir Francis Galton, the cousin of Darwin. Galton
first proposed to call this study "Stirpiculture." Under that name it
inspired Noyes, the founder of the Oneida Community, with the impulse to
carry it into practice with a thoroughness and daring--indeed a
similarity of method--which caused Oneida almost to rival the City of
the Sun. But the scheme of Noyes, excellent as in some respects it was
as an experiment, outran both scientific knowledge and the spirit of the
times. It was not countenanced by Galton, who never had any wish to
offend general sentiment, but sought to win it over to his side, and
before 1880 the Oneida Community was brought to an end in consequence of
the antagonism it aroused. Galton continued to develop his conceptions
slowly and cautiously, and in 1883, in his _Inquiries into Human
Faculty_, he abandoned the term "Stirpiculture" and devised the term
"Eugenics," which is now generally adopted to signify Good Breeding.
Galton was quite well aware that the improved breeding of men is a very
different matter from the improved breeding of animals, requiring a
different knowledge and a different method, so that the ridicule which
has sometimes been ignorantly flung at Eugenics failed to touch him. It
would be clearly undesirable to breed men, as animals are bred, for
single points at the sacrifice of other points, even if we were in a
position to breed men from outside. Human breeding must proceed from
impulses that arise, voluntarily, in human brains and wills, and are
carried out with a human sense of personal responsibility. Galton
believed that the first need was the need of knowledge in these matters.
He was not anxious to invoke legislation.[24] The compulsory presentation
of certificates of health and good breeding as a preliminary to marriage
forms no part of Eugenics, nor is compulsory sterilization a demand made
by any reasonable eugenist. Certainly the custom of securing
certificates of health and ability is excellent, not only as a
preliminary to marriage, but as a general custom. Certainly, also, there
are cases in which sterilization is desirable, if voluntarily
accepted.[25] But neither certification nor sterilization should be
compulsory. They only have their value if they are intelligent and
deliberate, springing out of a widened and enlightened sense of personal
responsibility to society and to the race.
Eugenics constitutes the link between the Social Reform of the past,
painfully struggling to improve the conditions of life, and the Social
Hygiene of the future, which is authorized to deal adequately with the
conditions of life because it has its hands on the sources of life. On
this plane we are able to concentrate our energies on the finer ends of
life, because we may reasonably expect to be no longer hampered by the
ever-increasing burdens which were placed upon us by the failure to
control life; while the more we succeed in our efforts to purify and
strengthen life, the more magnificent become the tasks we may reasonably
hope to attempt and compass.
A problem which is often and justly cited as one to be settled by
Eugenics is that presented by the existence among us of the large class
of the feeble-minded. No doubt there are some who would regret the
disappearance of the feeble-minded from our midst. The philosophies of
the Bergsonian type, which to-day prevail so widely, place intuition
above reason, and the "pure fool" has sometimes been enshrined and
idolized. But we may remember that Eugenics can never prevent absolutely
the occurrence of feeble-minded persons, even in the extreme degree of
the imbecile and the idiot.[26] They come within the range of variation,
by the same right as genius so comes. We cannot, it may be, prevent the
occurrence of such persons, but we can prevent them from being the
founders of families tending to resemble themselves. And in so doing, it
will be agreed by most people, we shall be effecting a task of immense
benefit to society and the race.
Feeble-mindedness is largely handed on by heredity. It was formerly
supposed that idiocy and feeble-mindedness are mainly due to
environmental conditions, to the drink, depravity, general disease, or
lack of nutrition of the parents, and there is no doubt an element of
truth in that view. But serious and frequent as are the results of bad
environment and acquired disease in the parentage of the feeble-minded,
they do not form the fundamental factor in the production of the
feeble-minded.[27]
Feeble-mindedness is essentially a germinal variation, belonging to the
same large class as all other biological variations, occurring, for the
most part, in the first place spontaneously, but strongly tending to be
inherited. It thus resembles congenital cataract, deaf-mutism, the
susceptibility to tuberculous infection, etc.[28]
Exact investigation is now showing that feeble-mindedness is passed on
from parent to child to an enormous extent. Some years ago Ashby,
speaking from a large experience in the North of England, estimated that
at least seventy-five per cent of feeble-minded children are born with
an inherited tendency to mental defect. More precise investigation has
since shown that this estimate was under the mark. Tredgold, who in
England has most carefully studied the heredity of the feeble-minded,[29]
found that in over eighty-two per cent cases there is a bad nervous
inheritance. In a large number of cases the bad heredity was associated
with alcoholism or consumption in the parentage, but only in a small
proportion of cases (about seven per cent) was it probable that
alcoholism and consumption alone, and usually combined, had sufficed to
produce the defective condition of the children, while environmental
conditions only produced mental defect in ten per cent cases.[30]
Heredity is the chief cause of feeble-mindedness, and a normal child is
never born of two feeble-minded parents. The very thorough investigation
of the heredity of the feeble-minded which is now being carried on at
the institution for their care at Vineland, New Jersey, shows even more
decisive results. By making careful pedigrees of the families to which
the inmates at Vineland belong it is seen that in a large proportion of
cases feeble-mindedness is handed on from generation to generation, and
is traceable through three generations, though it sometimes skips a
generation. In one family of three hundred and nineteen persons, one
hundred and nineteen were known to be feeble-minded, and only forty-two
known to be normal. The families tended to be large, sometimes very
large, most of them in many cases dying in infancy or growing up
weak-minded.[31]
Not only is feeble-mindedness inherited, and to a much greater degree
than has hitherto been suspected even by expert authorities, but the
feeble-minded thus tend (though, as Davenport and Weeks have found, not
invariably) to have a larger number of children than normal people. That
indeed, we might expect, apart altogether from the question of any
innate fertility. The feeble-minded have no forethought and no
self-restraint. They are not adequately capable of resisting their own
impulses or the solicitations of others, and they are unable to
understand adequately the motives which guide the conduct of ordinary
people. The average number of children of feeble-minded people seems to
be frequently about one-third more than in normal families, and is
sometimes much greater. Dr. Ettie Sayer, when investigating for the
London County Council the family histories of one hundred normal
families and one hundred families in which mentally defective children
had been found, ascertained that the families of the latter averaged 7.6
children, while in the normal families they averaged 5. Tredgold,
specially investigating 150 feeble-minded cases, found that they
belonged to families in which 1269 children had been born, that is to
say 7.3 per family, or, counting still-born children, 8.4. Nearly
two-thirds of these abnormally large families were mentally defective,
many showing a tendency to disease, pauperism, criminality, or else to
early death.[32]
Here, indeed, we have a counterbalancing influence, for, in the large
families of the feeble-minded, there is a correspondingly large
infantile mortality. A considerable proportion of Tredgold's group of
children were born dead, and a very large number died early. Eichholz,
again, found that, in one group of defective families, about sixty per
cent of the children died young. That is probably an unusually high
proportion, and in Eichholz's cases it seems to have been associated
with very unusually large families, but the infant mortality is always
very high.
This large early mortality of the offspring of the feeble-minded is,
however, very far from settling the question of the disposal of the
mentally defective, or we should not find families of them propagated
from generation to generation. The large number who die early merely
serves, roughly speaking, to reduce the size of the abnormal family to
the size of a normal family, and some authorities consider that it
scarcely suffices to do this, for we must remember that there is a
considerable mortality even in the so-called normal family during early
life. Even when there is no abnormal fertility in the defective family
we may still have to recognize that, as Davenport and Weeks argue, their
defectiveness is intensified by heredity. Moreover, we have to consider
the social disorder and the heavy expense which accompany the large
infantile mortality. Illegitimacy is frequently the result of
feeble-mindedness, since feeble-minded women are peculiarly unable to
resist temptation. A great number of such women are continually coming
into the workhouses and giving birth to illegitimate children whom they
are unable to support, and who often never become capable of supporting
themselves, but in their turn tend to produce a new feeble-minded
generation, more especially since the men who are attracted to these
feeble-minded women are themselves--according to the generally
recognized tendency of the abnormal to be attracted to the
abnormal--feeble-minded or otherwise mentally defective. There is thus
generated not only a heavy financial burden, but also a perpetual danger
to society, and, it may well be, a serious depreciation in the quality
of the community.[33]
It is not only in themselves that the feeble-minded are a burden on the
present generation and a menace to future generations. In large measure
they form the reservoir from which the predatory classes are recruited.
This is, for instance, the case as regards prostitutes. Feeble-minded
girls, of fairly high grade, may often be said to be predestined to
prostitution if left to themselves, not because they are vicious, but
because they are weak and have little power of resistance. They cannot
properly weigh their actions against the results of their actions, and
even if they are intelligent enough to do that, they are still too weak
to regulate their actions accordingly. Moreover, even when, as often
happens among the high-grade feeble-minded, they are quite able and
willing to work, after they have lost their "respectability" by having a
child, the opportunities for work become more restricted, and they drift
into prostitution. It has been found that of nearly 15,000 women who
passed through Magdalen Homes in England, over 2500, or more than
sixteen per cent--and this is probably an under-estimate--were
definitely feeble-minded. The women belonging to this feeble-minded
group were known to have added 1000 illegitimate children to the
population. In Germany Bonhoeffer found among 190 prostitutes who passed
through a prison that 102 were hereditarily degenerate and 53
feeble-minded. This would be an over-estimate as regards average
prostitutes, though the offences were no doubt usually trivial, but in
any case the association between prostitution and feeble-mindedness is
intimate. Everywhere, there can be no doubt, the ranks of prostitution
contain a considerable proportion of women who were, at the very outset,
in some slight degree feeble-minded, mentally and morally a little
blunted through some taint of inheritance.[34]
Criminality, again, is associated with feeble-mindedness in the most
intimate way. Not only do criminals tend to belong to large families,
but the families that produce feeble-minded offspring also produce
criminals, while a certain degree of feeble-mindedness is extremely
common among criminals, and the most hopeless and typical, though
fortunately rare, kind of criminal, frequently termed a "moral
imbecile," is nothing more than a feeble-minded person whose defect is
shown not so much in his intelligence as in his feelings and his
conduct. Sir H.B. Donkin, who speaks with authority on this matter,
estimates that, though it is difficult to obtain the early history of
the criminals who enter English prisons, about twenty per cent of them
are of primarily defective mental capacity. This would mean that every
year some 35,000 feeble-minded persons are sent to English prisons as
"criminals." The tendency of criminals to belong to the feeble-minded
class is indeed every day becoming more clearly recognized. At
Pentonville, putting aside prisoners who were too mentally affected to
be fit for prison discipline, eighteen per cent of the adult prisoners
and forty per cent of the juvenile offenders were found to be
feeble-minded. This includes only those whose defect is fairly obvious,
and is not the result of methodical investigation. It is certain that
such methodical inquiry would reveal a very large proportion of cases of
less obvious mental defect. Thus the systematic examination of a number
of delinquent children in an Industrial School showed that in
seventy-five per cent cases they were defective as compared to normal
children, and that their defectiveness was probably inborn. Even the
possession of a considerable degree of cunning is no evidence against
mental defect, but may rather be said to be a sign of it, for it shows
an intelligence unable to grasp the wider relations of life, and
concentrated on the gratification of petty and immediate desires. Thus
it happens that the cunning of criminals is frequently associated with
almost inconceivable stupidity.[35]
Closely related to the great feeble-minded class, and from time to time
falling into crime, are the inmates of workhouses, tramps, and the
unemployable. The so-called "able-bodied" inmates of the workhouses are
frequently found, on medical examination, to be, in more than fifty per
cent cases, mentally defective, equally so whether they are men or
women. Tramps, by nature and profession, who overlap the workhouse
population, and are estimated to number 20,000 to 30,000 in England and
Wales, when the genuine unemployed are eliminated, are everywhere found
to be a very degenerate class, among whom the most mischievous kinds of
feeble-mindedness and mental perversion prevail. Inebriates, the people
who are chronically and helplessly given to drink, largely belong to the
same great family, and do not so much become feeble-minded because they
drink, but possess the tendency to drink because they have a strain of
feeble-mindedness from birth. Branthwaite, the chief English authority
on this question, finds that of the inebriates who come to his notice,
putting aside altogether the group of actually insane persons, about
sixty-three per cent are mentally defective, and scarcely more than a
third of the whole number of average mental capacity. It is evident that
these people, even if restored to sobriety, would still retain their
more or less inborn defectiveness, and would remain equally, unfit to
become the parents of the coming generation.
These are the kind of people--tramps, prostitutes, paupers, criminals,
inebriates, all tending to be born a little defective--who largely make
up the great degenerate families whose histories are from time to time
recorded. Such a family was that of the Jukes in America, who, in the
course of five generations, by constantly intermarrying with bad stocks,
produced 709 known descendants who were on the whole unfit for society,
and have been a constant danger and burden to society.[36] A still larger
family of the same kind, more recently studied in Germany, consisted of
834 known persons, all descended from a drunken vagabond woman, probably
somewhat feeble-minded but physically vigorous. The great majority of
these descendants were prostitutes, tramps, paupers, and criminals (some
of them murderers), and the direct cost in money to the Prussian State
for the keep and care of this woman and her family has been a quarter of
a million pounds. Yet another such family is that of the "Zeros." Three
centuries ago they were highly respectable people, living in a Swiss
valley. But they intermarried with an insane stock, and subsequently
married other women of an unbalanced nature. In recent times 310 members
of this family have been studied, and it is found that vagrancy,
feeble-mindedness, mental troubles, criminality, pauperism, immorality
are, as it may be termed, their patrimony.[37]
These classes, with their tendency to weak-mindedness, their inborn
laziness, lack of vitality, and unfitness for organized activity,
contain the people who complain that they are starving for want of work,
though they will never perform any work that is given them.
Feeble-mindedness is an absolute dead-weight on the race. It is an evil
that is unmitigated. The heavy and complicated social burdens and
injuries it inflicts on the present generation are without compensation,
while the unquestionable fact that in any degree it is highly
inheritable renders it a deteriorating poison to the race; it
depreciates the quality of a people. The task of Social Hygiene which
lies before us cannot be attempted by this feeble folk. Not only can
they not share it, but they impede it; their clumsy hands are for ever
becoming entangled in the delicate mechanism of our modern civilization.
Their very existence is itself an impediment. Apart altogether from the
gross and obvious burden in money and social machinery which the
protection they need, and the protection we need against them, casts
upon the community,[38] they dilute the spiritual quality of the
community to a degree which makes it an inapt medium for any high
achievement. It matters little how small a city or a nation is, provided
the spirit of its people is great. It is the smallest communities that
have most powerfully and most immortally raised the level of
civilization, and surrounded the human species (in its own eyes) with a
halo of glory which belongs to no other species. Only a handful of
people, hemmed in on every side, created the eternal radiance of Athens,
and the fame of the little city of Florence may outlive that of the
whole kingdom of Italy. To realize this truth in the future of
civilization is one of the first tasks of Social Hygiene.[39]
It is here that the ideals of Eugenics may be expected to work
fruitfully. To insist upon the power of heredity was once considered to
indicate a fatalistic pessimism. It wears a very different aspect
nowadays, in the light of Eugenics. "To the eugenist," as Davenport
observes, "heredity stands as the one great hope of the human race: its
saviour from imbecility, poverty, disease, immorality."[40] We cannot,
indeed, desire any compulsory elimination of the unfit or any centrally
regulated breeding of the fit.[41] Such notions are idle, and even the
mere fact that unbalanced brains may air them abroad tends to impair the
legitimate authority of eugenic ideals. The two measures which are now
commonly put forward for the attainment of eugenic ends--health
certificates as a legal preliminary to marriage and the sterilization of
the unfit--are excellent when wisely applied, but they become
mischievous, if not ridiculous, in the hands of fanatics who would
employ them by force. Domestic animals may be highly bred from outside,
compulsorily. Man can only be bred upwards from within through the
medium of his intelligence and will, working together under the control
of a high sense of responsibility. The infinite cunning of men and women
is fully equal to the defeat of any attempt to touch life at this
intimate point against the wish of those to whom the creation of life is
entrusted. The laws of marriage even among savages have often been
complex and strenuous in the highest degree. But it has been easy to
bear them, for they have been part of the sacred and inviolable
traditions of the race; religion lay behind them. And Galton, who
recognized the futility of mere legislation in the elevation of the
race, believed that the hope of the future lies in rendering eugenics a
part of religion. The only compulsion we can apply in eugenics is the
compulsion that comes from within. All those in whom any fine sense of
social and racial responsibility is developed will desire, before
marriage, to give, and to receive, the fullest information on all the
matters that concern ancestral inheritance, while the registration of
such information, it is probable, will become ever simpler and more a
matter of course.[42] And if he finds that he is not justified in aiding
to carry on the race, the eugenist will be content to make himself, in
the words of Jesus, "a eunuch for the kingdom of Heaven's sake,"
whether, under modern conditions, that means abstention in marriage from
procreation, or voluntary sterilization by operative methods.[43] For, as
Giddings has put it, the goal of the race lies, not in the ruthless
exaltation of a super-man, but in the evolution of a super-mankind. Such
a goal can only be reached by resolute selection and elimination.[44]
The breeding of men lies largely in the hands of women. That is why the
question of Eugenics is to a great extent one with the woman question.
The realization of eugenics in our social life can only be attained with
the realization of the woman movement in its latest and completest phase
as an enlightened culture of motherhood, in all that motherhood involves
alike on the physical and the psychic sides. Motherhood on the eugenic
basis is a deliberate and selective process, calling for the highest
intelligence as well as the finest emotional and moral aptitudes, so
that all the best energies of a long evolution of womanhood in the paths
of modern culture here find their final outlet. The breeding of children
further involves the training of children, and since the expansion of
Social Hygiene renders education a far larger and more delicate task
than it has ever been before, the responsibilities laid upon women by
the evolution of civilization become correspondingly great.
For the men who have been thus born and taught the tasks imposed by
Social Hygiene are in no degree lighter. They demand all the best
qualities of a selectively bred race from which the mentally and
physically weak have, so far as possible, been bred out. The
substitution of law for war alike in the relations of class to class,
and of nation to nation, and the organization of international methods
of social intercourse between peoples of different tongues and unlike
traditions, are but two typical examples of the tasks, difficult but
imperative, which Social Hygiene presents and the course of modern
civilization renders insistent. Again, the adequate adjustment of the
claims of the individual and the claims of the community, each carried
to its farthest point, can but prove an exquisite test of the quality of
any well-bred and well-trained race. It is exactly in that balancing of
apparent opposites, the necessity of pushing to extremes both opposites,
and the consequent need of cultivating that quality of temperance the
Greeks estimated so highly, that the supreme difficulties of modern
civilization lie. We see these difficulties again in relation to the
extension of law. It is desirable and inevitable that the sphere of law
should be extended, and that the disputes which are still decided by
brutal and unreasoning force should be decided by humane and reasoning
force, that is to say, by law. But, side by side with this extension of
law, it is necessary to wage a constant war with the law-making
tendency, to cherish an undying resolve to maintain unsullied those
sacred and intimate impulses, all the finest activities of the moral
sphere, which the generalizing hand of law can only injure and stain.
It is these fascinating and impassioning problems, every day becoming of
more urgent practical importance, which it is the task of Social Hygiene
to solve, having first created the men and women who are fit to solve
them. It is such problems as these that we are to-day called upon to
illuminate, as far as we may--it may not yet be very far--by the dry
light of science.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Muralt, _Lettres sur les Anglais_. Lettre V.
[2] In the reign of Richard II (1388) an Act was passed for "the
punishment of those which cause corruption near a city or great town to
corrupt the air." A century later (in Henry VII's time) an Act was
passed to prevent butchers killing beasts in walled towns, the preamble
to this Act declaring that no noble town in Christendom should contain
slaughter-houses lest sickness be thus engendered. In Charles II's time,
after the great fire of London, the law provided for the better paving
and cleansing of the streets and sewers. It was, however, in Italy, as
Weyl points out (_Geschichte der Sozialen Hygiene im Mittelalter_, at a
meeting of the Gesellschaft für Soziale Medizin, May 25, 1905), that the
modern movement of organized sanitation began. In the thirteenth century
the great Italian cities (like Florence and Pistoja) possessed _Codici
Sanitarii_; but they were not carried out, and when the Black Death
reached Florence in 1348, it found the city altogether unprepared. It
was Venice which, in the same year, first initiated vigorous State
sanitation. Disinfection was first ordained by Gian Visconti, in Milan,
in 1399. The first quarantine station of which we hear was established
in Venice in 1403.
[3] The rate of infant mortality in England and Wales has decreased from
149 per 1000 births in 1871-80 to 127 per 1000 births in 1910. In
reference to this remarkable fall which has taken place _pari passu_
with the fall in the birth-rate, Newsholme, the medical officer to the
Local Government Board, writes: "There can be no reasonable doubt that
much of the reduction has been caused by that 'concentration' on the
mother and the child which has been a striking feature of the last few
years. Had the experience of 1896-1900 held good there would have been
45,120 more deaths of infants in 1910 than actually occurred." In some
parts of the country, however, where the women go out to work in
factories (as in Lancashire and parts of Staffordshire) the infantile
mortality remains very high.
[4] Mrs. Bertrand Russell, "The Ghent School for Mothers," _Nineteenth
Century_, December, 1906.
[5] It is scarcely necessary to say that other classifications of social
reform on its more hygienic side may be put forward. Thus W.H. Allen,
looking more narrowly at the sanitary side of the matter, but without
confining his consideration to the nineteenth century, finds that there
are always seven stages: (1) that of racial tutelage, when sanitation
becomes conscious and receives the sanction of law; (2) the introduction
of sanitary comfort, well-paved streets, public sewers, extensive
waterworks; (3) the period of commercial sanitation, when the mercantile
classes insist upon such measures as quarantine and street-cleaning to
check the immense ravages of epidemics; (4) the introduction of
legislation against nuisances and the tendency to extend the definition
of nuisance, which for Bracton, in the fourteenth century, meant an
obstruction, and for Blackstone, in the eighteenth, included things
otherwise obnoxious, such as offensive trades and foul watercourses; (5)
the stage of precaution against the dangers incidental to the slums that
are fostered by modern conditions of industry; (6) the stage of
philanthropy, erecting hospitals, model tenements, schools, etc.; (7)
the stage of socialistic sanitation, when the community as a whole
actively seeks its own sanitary welfare, and devotes public funds to
this end. (W.H. Allen, "Sanitation and Social Progress," _American
Journal of Sociology_, March, 1903.)
[6] Dr. F. Bushee has pointed out ("Science and Social Progress,"
_Popular Science Monthly_, September, 1911) that there is a kind of
related progression between science and practice in this matter: "The
natural sciences developed first, because man was first interested in
the conquest of nature, and the simpler physical laws could be grasped
at an early period. This period brought an increase of wealth, but it
was wasteful of human life. The desire to save life led the way to the
study of biology. Knowledge of the physical environment and of life,
however, did not prevent social disease from flourishing, and did not
greatly improve the social condition of a large part of society. To
overcome these defects the social sciences within recent years have been
cultivated with great seriousness. Interest in the social sciences has
had to wait for the enlarged sympathies and the sense of solidarity
which has appeared with the growing interdependence of dense
populations, and these conditions have been dependent upon the advance
of the other sciences. With the cultivation of the social sciences, the
chain of knowledge will be complete, at least so far as the needs which
have already appeared are concerned. For each group of sciences will
solve one or more of the great problems which man has encountered in the
process of development. The physical sciences will solve the problems of
environment, the biological sciences the problems of life, and the
social sciences the problems of society."
[7] This exclusive pre-occupation with the improvement of the
environment has been termed Euthenics by Mrs. Ellen H. Richards, who has
written a book with this title, advocating euthenics in opposition to
eugenics.
[8] Not one of the four stages of social reform already summarized can
be neglected. On the contrary, they all need to be still further
consolidated in a completely national organization of health. I may
perhaps refer to the little book on _The Nationalization of Health_, in
which, many years ago, I foreshadowed this movement, as well as to the
recent work of Professor Benjamin Moore on the same subject. The
gigantic efforts of Germany, and later of England, to establish National
Insurance systems, bear noble witness to the ardour with which these two
countries, at all events, are moving towards the desired goal.
[9] In some countries, however, the decline, although traceable about
1876, only began to be pronounced somewhat later, in Austria in 1883, in
the German Empire, Hungary and Italy in 1885, and in Prussia in 1886.
Most of these countries, though late in following the modern movement of
civilization initiated by France, are rapidly making their way in the
same direction. Thus the birth-rate in Berlin is already as low as that
of Paris ten years ago, although the French decline began at a very
early period. In Norway, again, the decline was not marked until 1900,
but the birth-rate has nevertheless already fallen as low as that of
Sweden, where the fall began very much earlier.
[10] "Foresight and self-control is, and always must be, the ground and
medium of all Moral Socialism," says Bosanquet (_The Civilization of
Christendom_, p. 336), using the term "Socialism" in the wide and not in
the economic sense. We see the same civilized growth of foresight and
self-control in the decrease of drunkenness. Thus in England the number
of convictions for drunkenness, while varying greatly in different parts
of the country, is decreasing for the whole country at the rapid rate of
5000 to 8000 a year, notwithstanding the constant growth of the
population. It is incorrect to suppose that this decrease has any
connection with decreased opportunities for drinking; thus in London
County and in Cardiff the proportion of premises licensed for drinking
is the same, yet while the convictions for drunkenness in 1910 were in
London 83 per 10,000 inhabitants, in Cardiff they were under 6 per
10,000.
[11] Thus Heron finds that in London during the past fifty years there
has been 100 per cent increase in the intensity of the relation between
low social birth and high birth-rate, and that the high birth-rate of
the lower social classes is not fully compensated by their high
death-rate (D. Heron, "On the Relation of Fertility in Man to Social
Status," _Drapers' Company Research Memoirs_, No. I, 1906). As, however,
Newsholme and Stevenson point out (_Journal Royal Statistical Society_,
April, 1906, p. 74), the net addition to the population made by the best
social classes is at so very slightly lower a rate than that made by the
poorest class that, even if we consent to let the question rest on this
ground, there is still no urgent need for the wailings of Cassandra.
[12] _Sociological Papers_ of the Sociological Society, 1904, p. 35.
[13] There is a certain profit in studying one's own ancestry. It has
been somewhat astonishing to me to find how very slight are the social
oscillations traceable in a middle-class family and the families it
intermarries with through several centuries. A professional family tends
to form a caste marrying within that caste. An ambitious member of the
family may marry a baronet's daughter, and another, less pretentious, a
village tradesman's daughter; but the general level is maintained
without rising or falling. Occasionally, it happens that the ambitious
and energetic son of a prosperous master-craftsman becomes a
professional man, marries into the professional caste, and founds a
professional family; such a family seems to flourish for some three
generations, and then suddenly fails and dies out in the male line,
while the vigour of the female line is not impaired.
[14] The new social adjustment of a family, it is probable, is always
difficult, and if the change is sudden or extreme, the new environment
may rapidly prove fatal to the family. Lorenz (_Lehrbuch der
Genealogie_, p. 135) has shown that when a peasant family reaches an
upper social class it dies out in a few generations.
[15] See, on this point, Reibmayr, _Entwicklungsgeschichte des Talentes
und Genies_, Vol. I, ch. VII.
[16] Fahlbeck, _op. cit._, p. 168.
[17] Regeneration implies that there has been degeneration, and it cannot
be positively affirmed that such degeneration has, on the whole,
occurred in such a manner as to affect the race. Reibmayr (_Die
Entwicklungsgeschichte des Talentes und Genies_, Bd. I, p. 400) regards
degeneration as a process setting in with urbanization and the tendency
to diminished population; if so, it is but another name for
civilization, and can only be condemned by condemning civilization,
whether or not physical deterioration occurs. The Inter-departmental
Commission on Physical Deterioration held in 1904, in London, concluded
that there are no sufficient statistical or other data to prove that the
physique of the people in the present, as compared with the past, has
undergone any change; and this conclusion was confirmed by the
Director-General of the Army Medical Service. There is certainly good
reason to believe that urban populations (and especially industrial
workers in factories) are inferior in height and weight and general
development to rural populations, and less fit for military or similar
service. The stunted development of factory workers in the East End of
London was noted nearly a century ago, and German military experience
distinctly shows the inferiority of the town-dweller to the
country-dweller. (See e.g. Weyl, _Handbuch der Hygiene_, Supplement, Bd.
IV, pp. 746 _et seq._; _Politisch-Anthropologische Revue_, 1905, pp. 145
_et seq._) The proportion of German youths fit for military service
slowly decreases every year; in 1909 it was 53.6 per cent, in 1910 only
53 per cent; of those born in the country and engaged in agricultural or
forest work 58.2 were found fit; of those born in the country and
engaged in other industries, 55.1 per cent; of those born in towns, but
engaged in agricultural or forest work, 56.2 per cent; of those born in
towns and engaged in other industries 47.9 per cent. It is fairly clear
that this deterioration under urban and industrial conditions cannot
properly be termed a racial degeneration. It is, moreover, greatly
improved even by a few months' training, and there is an immense
difference between the undeveloped, feeble, half-starved recruit from
the slums and the robust, broad-shouldered veteran when he leaves the
army. The term "aggeneration"--not beyond criticism, though it is free
from the objection to "regeneration"--was proposed by Prof. Christian
von Ehrenfels ("Die Aufsteigende Entwicklung des Menschen,"
_Politisch-Anthropologische Revue_, April, 1903, p. 50).
[18] It is unnecessary to touch here on the question of infant mortality,
which has already been referred to, and will again come in for
consideration in a later chapter. It need only be said that a high
birth-rate is inextricably combined with a high death-rate. The European
countries with the highest birth-rates are, in descending order: Russia,
Bulgaria, Roumania, Servia, and Hungary. The European countries with the
highest death-rates are, in descending order, almost the same: Russia,
Hungary, Spain, Bulgaria, and Servia, It is the same outside Europe.
Thus Chile, with a birth-rate which comes next after Roumania, has a
death-rate that is only second to Russia.
[19] Nyström (_La Vie Sexuelle_, 1910, p. 248) believes that "the time is
coming when it will be considered the duty of municipal authorities, if
they have found by experience or have reason to suspect that children
will be thrown upon the parish, to instruct parents in methods of
preventive conception."
[20] The directly unfavourable influences on the child of too short an
interval between its birth and that of the previous child has been
shown, for instance, by Dr. R.J. Ewart ("The Influence of Parental Age
on Offspring," _Eugenics Review_, October, 1911). He has found at
Middlesbrough that children born at an interval of less than two years
after the birth of the previous child still show at the age of six a
notable deficiency in height, weight, and intelligence, when compared
with children born after a longer interval, or with first-born children.
[21] _Tatler_, Vol. II, No. 175, 1709.
[22] "Write Man for Primula, and the stage of the world for that of the
greenhouse," says Professor Bateson (_Biological Fact and the Structure
of Society_, 1912, p. 9), "and I believe that with a few generations of
experimental breeding we should acquire the power similarly to determine
how the varieties of men should be represented in the generations that
succeed." But Bateson proceeds to point out that our knowledge is still
very inadequate, and he is opposed to eugenics by Act of Parliament.
[23] E. Solmi, _La Città del Sole di Campanella_, 1904, p. xxxiv.
[24] Only a year before his death Galton wrote (Preface to _Essays in
Eugenics_): "The power by which Eugenic reform must chiefly be effected
is that of Popular Opinion, which is amply strong enough for that
purpose whenever it shall be roused."
[25] It may perhaps be necessary to remark that by sterilization is here
meant, not castration, but, in the male vasectomy (and a corresponding
operation in the female), a simple and harmless operation which involves
no real mutilation and no loss of power beyond that of procreation. See
on this and related points, Havelock Ellis, _Studies in the Psychology
of Sex_, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society," chap. XII.
[26] The term "feeble-minded" may be used generally to cover all degrees
of mental weakness. In speaking a little more precisely, however, we
have to recognize three main degrees of congenital mental weakness:
_feeble-mindedness_, in which with care and supervision it is possible
to work and earn a livelihood; _imbecility_, in which the subject is
barely able to look after himself, and sometimes only has enough
intelligence to be mischievous (the moral imbecile); and _idiocy_, the
lowest depth of all, in which the subject has no intelligence and no
ability to look after himself. More elaborate classifications are
sometimes proposed. The method of Binet and Simon renders possible a
fairly exact measurement of feeble-mindedness.
[27] Mott (_Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry_, Vol. V, 1911) accepts
the view that in some cases feeble-mindedness is simply a form of
congenital syphilis, but he points out that feeble-mindedness abounds in
many rural districts where syphilis, as well as alcoholism, is very
rare, and concludes by emphasizing the influence of heredity; the
prevalence of feeble-mindedness in these rural districts is thus due to
the fact that the mentally and physically fit have emigrated to the
great industrial centres, leaving the unfit to procreate the race.
[28] "Whether germinal variations," remarked Dr. R.J. Ryle at a
Conference on Feeble-mindedness (_British Medical Journal_, October 3,
1911), "be expressed by cleft palate, cataract, or cerebral deficiency
of the pyramidal cells in the brain cortex, they may be produced, and,
when once produced, they are reproduced as readily as the perfected
structure of the face or eye or brain, if the gametes which contain
these potentialities unite to form the ovum. But Nature is not only the
producer. Given a fair field and no favour, natural selection would
leave no problem of the unfit to perplex the mind of man who looks
before and after. This we know cannot be, and we know, too, that we have
no longer the excuse of ignorance to cover the neglect of the new duties
which belong to the present epoch of civilization. We know now that we
have to deal with a growing group in our community who demand permanent
care and control as well for their own sakes as for the welfare of the
community. All are now agreed on the general principle of segregation,
but it is true that something more than this should be forthcoming. The
difficulties of theory are clearing up as our wider view obtains a
firmer grasp of our material, but the difficulties of practice are still
before us." These remarks correspond with the general results reached by
the Royal Commission on the Feeble-minded, which issued its voluminous
facts and conclusions in 1908.
[29] See, for instance, A.F. Tredgold, _Mental Deficiency_, 1908.
[30] The investigation of Bezzola showing that the maxima in the
conception of idiots occur at carnival time, and especially at the
vintage, has been held (especially by Forel) to indicate that alcoholism
of the parents at conception causes idiocy in the offspring. It may be
so. But it may also be that the licence of these periods enables the
defective members of the community to secure an amount of sexual
activity which they would be debarred from under normal conditions. In
that case the alcoholism would merely liberate, and not create, the
idiocy-producing mechanism.
[31] Godden, _Eugenics Review_, April, 1911.
[32] Feeble-mindedness and the other allied variations are not always
exactly repeated in inheritance. They may be transmuted in passing from
father to son, an epileptic father, for instance, having a feeble-minded
child. These relationships of feeble-mindedness have been clearly
brought out in an important investigation by Davenport and Weeks
(_Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease_, November, 1911), who have for
the first time succeeded in obtaining a large number of really thorough
and precise pedigrees of such cases.
[33] It may be as well to point out once more that the possibility of
such limited depreciation must not be construed into the statement that
there has been any general "degeneration of the race." It maybe added
that the notion that the golden age lay in the past, and that our own
age is degenerate is not confined to a few biometricians of to-day; it
has commended itself to uncritical minds in all ages, even the greatest,
as far back as we can go. Montesquieu referred to this common notion
(and attempted to explain it) in his _Pensées Diverses_: "Men have such
a bad opinion of themselves," he adds, "that they have believed not only
that their minds and souls were degenerate, but even their bodies, and
that they were not so tall as the men of previous ages." It is thus
quite logically that we arrive at the belief that when mankind first
appeared, "there were giants on the earth in those days," and that Adam
lived to the age of nine hundred and thirty. Evidently no syndromes of
degenerescence there!
[34] The Superintendent of a large State School for delinquent girls in
America (as quoted in the Chicago Vice Commission's Report on _The
Social Evil in Chicago_, p. 229) says: "The girls who come to us
possessed of normal brain power, or not infected with venereal disease,
we look upon as a prize indeed, and we seldom fail to make a woman worth
while of a really normal girl, whatever her environment has been. But we
have failed in numberless cases where the environment has been all
right, but the girl was born wrong."
[35] See e.g. Havelock Ellis, _The Criminal_, 4th ed., 1910, chap IV.
[36] R.L. Dugdale, _The Jukes_, 4th ed., 1910. It is noteworthy that
Dugdale, who wrote nearly forty years ago, was concerned to prove the
influence of bad environment rather than of bad heredity. At that time
the significance of heredity was scarcely yet conceived. It remains
true, however, that bad heredity and bad environment constantly work
together for evil.
[37] Jörger, _Archiv für Rassen-und Gesellschafts-Biologie_, 1905, p.
294. Criminal families are also recorded by Aubry, _La Contagion du
Meutre_.
[38] Even during school life this burden is serious. Mr. Bodey, Inspector
of Schools, states that the defective school child costs three times as
much as the ordinary school child.
[39] I have set forth these considerations more fully in a popular form
in _The Problem of the Regeneration of the Race_, the first of a series
of "New Tracts for the Times," issued under the auspices of the National
Council of Public Morals.
[40] C.B. Davenport, "Euthenics and Eugenics," _Popular Science Monthly_,
January, 1911.
[41] The use of the terms "fit" and "unfit" in a eugenic sense has been
criticized. It is said, for instance, that in a bad environment it may
be precisely the defective classes who are most "fit" to survive. It is
quite true that these terms are not well adapted to resist
hyper-critical attack. The persistence with which they are employed
seems, however, to indicate a certain "survival of the fittest." The
terms "worthy" and "unworthy," which some would prefer to substitute,
are unsatisfactory, for they have moral associations which are
misleading. Galton spoke of "civic worth" in this connection, and very
occasionally used the term "worthy" (with inverted commas), but he was
careful to point out (_Essays in Eugenics_, p. 35) that in eugenics "we
must leave morals as far as possible out of the discussion, not
entangling ourselves with the almost hopeless difficulties they raise as
to whether a character as a whole is good or bad."
[42] Dr. Toulouse has devoted a whole volume to the results of a minute
personal examination of Zola, the novelist, and another to Poincaré, the
mathematician. Such minute investigations are at present confined to men
of genius, but some day, perhaps, we shall consider that from the
eugenic standpoint all men are men of genius.
[43] Sterilization for social ends was introduced in Switzerland a few
years ago, in order to enable some persons with impaired self-control to
be set at liberty and resume work without the risk of adding to the
population defective members who would probably be a burden on the
community. It was performed with the consent of the subjects (in some
cases at their urgent request) and their relations, so requiring no
special legislation, and the results are said to be satisfactory. In
some American States sterilization for some classes of defective persons
has been established by statute, but it is difficult to obtain reliable
information as regards the working and the results of such legislation.
[44] When Professor Giddings speaks of the "goal of mankind," it must, of
course, be remembered, he is using a bold metaphor in order to make his
meaning clearer. Strictly speaking, mankind has no "goals," nor are
there any ends in Nature which are not means to further ends.
II
THE CHANGING STATUS OF WOMEN[45]
The Origin of the Woman Movement--Mary Wollstonecraft--George
Sand--Robert Owen--William Thompson--John Stuart Mill--The Modern
Growth of Social Cohesion--The Growth of Industrialism--Its
Influence in Woman's Sphere of Work--The Education of
Women--Co-education--The Woman Question and Sexual
Selection--Significance of Economic Independence--The State
Regulation of Marriage--The Future of Marriage--Wilhelm von
Humboldt--Social Equality of Women--The Reproduction of the Race as
a Function of Society--Women and the Future of Civilization.
I
It was in the eighteenth century, the seed-time of modern ideas, that
our great-grandfathers became conscious of a discordant break in the
traditional conceptions of women's status. The vague cries of Justice,
Freedom, Equality, which were then hurled about the world, were here and
there energetically applied to women--notably in France by
Condorcet--and a new movement began to grow self-conscious and coherent.
Mary Wollstonecraft, after Aphra Behn the first really noteworthy
Englishwoman of letters, gave voice to this movement in England.
The famous and little-read _Vindication of the Rights of Women_,
careless and fragmentary as it is, and by no means so startling to us as
to her contemporaries, shows Mary Wollstonecraft as a woman of genuine
insight, who saw the questions of woman's social condition in their
essential bearings. Her intuitions need little modification, even though
a century of progress has intervened. The modern advocates of woman's
suffrage have little to add to her brief statement. She is far, indeed,
from the monstrous notion of Miss Cobbe, that woman's suffrage is the
"crown and completion" of all progress so far as women's movements are
concerned. She looks upon it rather as one of the reasonable conditions
of progress. It is pleasant to turn from the eccentric energy of so many
of the advocates of women's causes to-day, all engaged in crying up
their own particular nostrum, to the genial many-sided wisdom of Mary
Wollstonecraft, touching all subjects with equal frankness and delicacy.
The most brilliant and successful exponent of the new revolutionary
ideas--making Corinne and her prototype seem dim and ineffectual--was
undoubtedly George Sand. The badly-dressed woman who earned her living
by scribbling novels, and said to M. du Camp, as she sat before him in
silence rolling her cigarette, "Je ne dis rien parceque je suis bête,"
has exercised a profound influence throughout Europe, an influence
which, in the Sclavonic countries especially, has helped to give impetus
to the resolution we are now considering. And this not so much from any
definite doctrines that underlie her work--for George Sand's views on
such matters varied as much as her political views--as from her whole
temper and attitude. Her large and rich nature, as sometimes happens in
genius of a high order, was twofold; on the one hand, she possessed a
solid serenity, a quiet sense of power, the qualities of a _bonne
bourgeoise_, which found expression in her imperturbable calm, her
gentle look and low voice. And with this was associated a massive,
almost Rabelaisian temperament (one may catch glimpses of it in her
correspondence), a sane exuberant earthliness which delighted in every
manifestation of the actual world. On the other hand, she bore within
her a volcanic element of revolt, an immense disgust of law and custom.
Throughout her life George Sand developed her strong and splendid
individuality, not perhaps as harmoniously, but as courageously and as
sincerely as even Goethe.
Robert Owen, who, like Saint-Simon in France, gave so extraordinary an
impulse to all efforts at social reorganization, and who planted the
seed of many modern movements, could not fail to extend his influence to
the region of sex. A disciple of his, William Thompson, who still holds
a distinguished position in the history of the economic doctrines of
Socialism, wrote, under the inspiration of a woman (a Mrs. Wheeler),
and published in 1825, an _Appeal of One Half of the Human Race, Women,
against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, to retain them in
Political, and thence in Civil and Domestic Slavery_. It is a thorough
and logical, almost eloquent, demand for the absolute social equality of
the sexes.[46]
Forty years later, Mill, also inspired by a woman, published his
_Subjection of Women_. However partial and inadequate it may seem to us,
this was at that day a notable book. Mill's clear vision and feminine
sensibilities gave freshness to his observations regarding the condition
and capacity of women, while his reputation imparted gravity and
resonance to his utterances. Since then the signs in literature of the
breaking up of the status of women have become far too numerous to be
chronicled even in a volume. It is enough to have mentioned here some
typical initiatory names. Now, the movement may be seen at work
anywhere, from Norway to Italy, from Russia to California. The status
which women are now entering places them, not, as in the old communism,
in large measure practically above men, nor, as in the subsequent
period, both practically and theoretically in subordination to men. It
places them side by side, with like rights and like duties in relation
to society.
II
Condorcet, Mary Wollstonecraft, George Sand, Owen, Mill--these were
feathers on the stream. They indicated the forces that had their source
at the centre of social life. That historical movement which produced
mother-law probably owed its rise, as well as its fall, to demands of
subsistence and property--that is, to economic causes. The decay of the
subsequent family system, in which the whole power is concentrated in
the male head, is being produced by similar causes. The early communism,
and the modes of action and sentiment which it had produced, still
practically persisted long after the new system had arisen. In the
patriarchal family the woman still had a recognized sphere of work and a
recognized right to subsistence. It was not, indeed, until the sudden
development of the industrial system, and the purely individualistic
economics with which it was associated, at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, that women in England were forced to realize that
their household industries were gone, and that they must join in that
game of competition in which the field and the rules had alike been
chosen with reference to men alone. The commercial and industrial
system, and the general diffusion of education that has accompanied it,
and which also has its roots in economic causes, has been the chief
motive force in revolutionizing the status of women; and the epoch of
unrestricted competition on masculine lines has been a necessary period
of transition.[47]
At the present time two great tendencies are visible in our social
organization. On the one hand, the threads of social life are growing
closer, and organization, as regards the simple and common means of
subsistence, is increasing. On the other hand, as regards the things
that most closely concern the individual person, the sphere of freedom
is being perpetually enlarged. Instead of every man digging a well for
his own use and at his own free pleasure, perhaps in a graveyard or a
cesspool, we consent to the distribution of water by a central
executive. We have carried social methods so far that, instead of
producing our own bread and butter, we prefer to go to a common bakery
and dairy. The same centralizing methods are extending to all those
things of which all have equal need. On the other hand, we exercise a
very considerable freedom of individual thought. We claim a larger and
larger freedom of individual speech and criticism. We worship any god we
choose, after any fashion we choose. The same individual freedom is
beginning to invade the sexual relationships. It is extending to all
those things in regard to which civilized men have become so variously
differentiated that they have no equal common needs. These two
tendencies, so far from being antagonistic, cannot even be carried out
under modern conditions of life except together. It is only by social
co-operation in regard to what is commonly called the physical side of
life that it becomes possible for the individual to develop his own
peculiar nature. The society of the future is a reasonable anarchy
founded on a broad basis of Collectivism.
It is not our object here to point out how widely these tendencies
affect men, but it is worth while to indicate some of their bearings on
the condition of women. While genuine productive industries have been
taken out of the hands of women who work under the old conditions, an
increasingly burdensome weight of unnecessary duties has been laid upon
them. Under the old communistic system, when a large number of families
lived together in one great house, the women combined to perform their
household duties, the cooking being done at a common fire. They had
grown up together from childhood, and combination could be effected
without friction. It is the result of the later system that the woman
has to perform all the necessary household duties in the most wasteful
manner, with least division of labour; while she has, in addition, to
perform a great amount of unnecessary work, in obedience to traditional
or conventional habits, which make it impossible even to perform the
simple act of dusting the rooms of a small house in less than perhaps an
hour and a half. She has probably also to accomplish, if she happens to
belong to the middle or upper classes, an idle round of so-called
"social duties." She tries to escape, when she can afford it, by
adopting the apparently simple expedient of paying other people to
perform these necessary and unnecessary household duties, but this
expedient fails; the "social duties" increase in the same ratio as the
servants increase and the task of overseeing these latter itself proves
formidable. It is quite impossible for any person under these conditions
to lead a reasonable and wholesome human life. A healthy life is more
difficult to attain for the woman of the ordinary household than for the
worker in a mine, for he at least, when the work of his set is over, has
two-thirds of the twenty-four hours to himself. The woman is bound by a
thousand Lilliputian threads from which there seems no escape. She often
makes frantic efforts to escape, but the combined strength of the
threads generally proves too strong. There can be no doubt that the
present household system is doomed; the higher standard of intelligence
demanded from women, the growth of interest in the problems of domestic
economy, the movement for association of labour, the revolt against the
survivals of barbaric complication in living--all these, which are
symptoms of a great economic revolution, indicate, the approach of a new
period.
The education of women is an essential part of the great movement we are
considering. Women will shortly be voters, and women, at all events in
England, are in a majority. We have to educate our mistresses as we once
had to educate our masters. And the word "education" is here used by no
means in the narrow sense. A woman may be acquainted with Greek and the
higher mathematics, and be as uneducated in the wider relationships of
life as a man in the like case. How much women suffer from this lack of
education may be seen to-day even among those who are counted as
leaders.
There are extravagances in every period of transition. Undoubtedly a
potent factor in bringing about a saner attitude will be the education
of boys and girls together. The lack of early fellowship fosters an
unnatural divergence of aims and ideals, and a consequent lack of
sympathy. It makes possible those abundant foolish generalizations by
men concerning "women," by women concerning "men." St. Augustine, at an
early period of his ardent career, conceived with certain friends the
notion of forming a community having goods in common; the scheme was
almost effected when it was discovered that "those little wives, which
some already had, and others would shortly have," objected, and so it
fell through. Perhaps the _mulierculæ_ were right. It is simply a rather
remote instance of a fundamental divergence amply illustrated before our
eyes. If men and women are to understand each other, to enter into each
other's natures with mutual sympathy, and to become capable of genuine
comradeship, the foundation must be laid in youth. Another wholesome
reform, promoted by co-education, is the physical education of women. In
the case of boys special attention has generally been given to physical
education, and the lack of it is one among several artificial causes of
that chronic ill-health which so often handicaps women. Women must have
the same education as men, Miss Faithfull shrewdly observes, because
that is sure to be the best. The present education of boys cannot,
however, be counted a model, and the gradual introduction of
co-education will produce many wholesome reforms. If the intimate
association of the sexes destroys what remnant may linger of the
unhealthy ideal of chivalry--according to which a woman was treated as a
cross between an angel and an idiot--that is matter for rejoicing.
Wherever men and women stand in each other's presence the sexual
instinct will always ensure an adequate ideal halo.
III
The chief question that we have to ask when we consider the changing
status of women is: How will it affect the reproduction of the race?
Hunger and love are the two great motor impulses, the ultimate source,
probably, of all other impulses. Hunger--that is to say, what we call
"economic causes"--has, because it is the more widespread and constant,
though not necessarily the more imperious instinct, produced nearly all
the great zoological revolutions, including, as we have seen, the rise
and fall of that phase of human evolution dominated by mother-law. Yet
love has, in the form of sexual selection, even before we reach the
vertebrates, moulded races to the ideal of the female; and reproduction
is always the chief end of nutrition which hunger waits on, the supreme
aim of life everywhere.
If we place on the one side man, as we know him during the historical
period, and on the other, nearly every highly organized member of the
animal family, there appears, speaking roughly and generally, a distinct
difference in the relation which these two motor impulses bear to each
other. Among animals generally, economics are comparatively so simple
that it is possible to satisfy the nutritive instinct without putting
any hard pressure on the spontaneous play of the reproductive instinct.
And nearly everywhere it is the female who has the chief voice in the
establishment of sexual relationships. The males compete for the favour
of the female by the fascination of their odour, or brilliant colour, or
song, or grace, or strength, as revealed in what are usually
mock-combats. The female is, in these respects, comparatively
unaccomplished and comparatively passive. With her rests the final
decision, and only after long hesitation, influenced, it seems, by a
vaguely felt ideal resulting from her contemplation of the rivals, she
calls the male of her choice.[48] A dim instinct seems to warn her of the
pains and cares of maternity, so that only the largest promises of
pleasure can induce her to undertake the function of reproduction. In
civilized man, on the other hand, as we know him, the situation is to
some extent reversed; it is the woman who, by the display of her
attractions, competes for the favour of the man. The final invitation
does not come, as among animals generally, from the female; the decision
rests with the man. It would be a mistake to suppose that this change
reveals the evolution of a superior method; although it has developed
the beauty of women, it has clearly had its origin in economic causes.
The demands of nutrition have overridden those of reproduction; sexual
selection has, to a large extent, given place to natural selection, a
process clearly not for the advantage of the race. The changing status
of women, in bestowing economic independence, will certainly tend to
restore to sexual selection its due weight in human development.
In so doing it will certainly tend also to destroy prostitution, which
is simply one of the forms in which the merging of sexual selection in
natural selection has shown itself. Wherever sexual selection has free
play, unhampered by economic considerations, prostitution is
impossible. The dominant type of marriage is, like prostitution, founded
on economic considerations; the woman often marries chiefly to earn her
living; here, too, we may certainly expect profound modifications. We
have long sought to preserve our social balance by placing an
unreasonable licence in the one scale, an equally unreasonable
abstinence in the other; the economic independence of women, tending to
render both extremes unnecessary, can alone place the sexual
relationships on a sound and free basis.
The State regulation of marriage has undoubtedly played a large and
important part in the evolution of society. At the present time the
advantages of this artificial control no longer appear so obvious
(even when the evidence of the law courts is put aside); they will
vanish altogether when women have attained complete economic
independence. With the disappearance of the artificial barriers in the
way of friendship between the sexes and of the economic motive to
sexual relationships--perhaps the two chief forces which now tend to
produce promiscuous sexual intercourse, whether dignified or not with
the name of marriage--men and women will be free to engage,
unhampered, in the search, so complicated in a highly civilized
condition of society, for a fitting mate.[49]
It is probable that this inevitable change will be brought about partly
by the voluntary action of individuals, and in greater measure by the
gradual and awkward method of shifting and ever freer divorce laws. The
slow disintegration of State-regulated marriage from the latter cause
may be observed now throughout the United States, where there is, on the
whole, a developing tendency to frequency and facility of divorce. It
is clear, however, that on this line marriage will not cease to be a
concern to the State, and it may be as well to point out at once the
important distinction between State-_regulated_ and State-_registered_
marriage. Sexual relationships, so long as they do not result in the
production of children, are matters in which the community has, as a
community, little or no concern, but as soon as a sexual relationship
results in the pregnancy of the woman the community is at once
interested. At this point it is clearly the duty of the State to
register the relationship.[50]
It is necessary to remember that the kind of equality of the sexes
towards which this change of status is leading, is social equality--that
is, equality of freedom. It is not an intellectual equality, still less
is it likeness. Men and women can only be alike mentally when they are
alike in physical configuration and physiological function. Even
complete economic equality is not attainable. Among animals which live
in herds under the guidance of a leader, this leader is nearly always a
male; there are few exceptions.[51] In woman, the long period of
pregnancy and lactation, and the prolonged helplessness of her child,
render her for a considerable period of her life economically dependent.
On whom shall she be dependent? This is a question of considerable
moment. According to the old conception of the family, all the members
were slaves producing for the benefit of the owner, and it was natural
that the wife should be supported by the husband when she is producing
slaves for his service. But this conception is, as we have seen, no
longer possible. It is clearly unfair also to compel the mother to
depend on her own previous exertions. The reproduction of the race is a
social function, and we are compelled to conclude that it is the duty of
the community, as a community, to provide for the child-bearer when in
the exercise of her social function she is unable to provide for
herself. The woman engaged in producing a new member, who may be a
source of incalculable profit or danger to the whole community, cannot
fail to be a source of the liveliest solicitude to everyone in the
community, and it was a sane and beautiful instinct that found
expression of old in the permission accorded to a pregnant woman to
enter gardens and orchards, and freely help herself. Whether this
instinct will ever again be embodied in a new form, and the reproduction
of the race be recognized as truly a social function, is a question
which even yet lacks actuality. The care of the child-bearer and her
child will at present continue to be a matter for individual
arrangement. That it will be arranged much better than at present we
may reasonably hope. On the one hand, the reckless multiplication of
children will probably be checked; on the other hand, a large body of
women will no longer be shut out from maternity. That the state should
undertake the regulation of the birth-rate we can scarcely either desire
or anticipate. Undoubtedly the community has an abstract right to limit
the number of its members. It may be pointed out, however, that under
rational conditions of life the process would probably be
self-regulating; in the human races, and also among animals generally,
fertility diminishes as the organism becomes highly developed. And,
without falling back on any natural law, it may be said that the
extravagant procreation of children, leading to suffering both to
parents and offspring, carried on under existing social conditions, is
largely the result of ignorance, largely of religious or other
superstition. A more developed social state would not be possible at all
unless the social instincts were strong enough to check the reckless
multiplication of offspring. Richardson and others appear to advocate
the special cultivation of a class of non-childbearing women. Certainly
no woman who freely chose should be debarred from belonging to such a
class. But reproduction is the end and aim of all life everywhere, and
in order to live a humanly complete life, every healthy woman should
have, not sexual relationships only, but the exercise at least once in
her life of the supreme function of maternity, and the possession of
those experiences which only maternity can give. That unquestionably is
the claim of natural and reasonable living in the social state towards
which we are moving.
To deal with the social organization of the future would be to pass
beyond the limits that I have here set myself, and to touch on matters
of which it is impossible to speak with certainty. The new culture of
women, in the light and the open air, will doubtless solve many matters
which now are dark to us. Morgan supposed that it was in some measure
the failure of the Greeks and Romans to develop their womanhood which
brought the speedy downfall of classic civilization. The women of the
future will help to renew art and science as well as life. They will do
more even than this, for the destiny of the race rests with women. "I
have sometimes thought," Whitman wrote in his _Democratic Vistas_, "that
the sole avenue and means to a reconstructed society depended primarily
on a new birth, elevation, expansion, invigoration of women." That
intuition is not without a sound basis, and if a great historical
movement called for justification here would be enough.
FOOTNOTES:
[45] This chapter was written so long ago as 1888, and published in the
_Westminster Review_ in the following year. I have pleasure in here
including it exactly as it was originally written, not only because it
has its proper place in the present volume, but because it may be
regarded as a programme which I have since elaborated in numerous
volumes. The original first section has, however, been omitted, as it
embodied a statement of the matriarchal theory which, in view of the
difficulty of the subject and the wide differences of opinion about it,
I now consider necessary to express more guardedly (see, for a more
recent statement, Havelock Ellis, _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_,
Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society," chap. X). With this exception,
and the deletion of two insignificant footnotes, no changes have been
made. After the lapse of a quarter of a century I find nothing that I
seriously wish to withdraw and much that I now wish to emphasize.
[46] The following passage summarizes this _Appeal_: "The simple and
modest request is, that they may be permitted equal enjoyments with men,
_provided they can, by the free and equal development and exercise of
their faculties, procure for themselves such enjoyments_. They ask the
same means that men possess of acquiring every species of knowledge, of
unfolding every one of their faculties of mind and body that can be made
tributary to their happiness. They ask every facility of access to every
art, occupation, profession, from the highest to the lowest, without one
exception, to which their inclinations and talents may direct and may
fit them to occupy. They ask the removal of _all_ restraints and
exclusions not applicable to men of equal capacities. They ask for
perfectly equal political, civil, and domestic rights. They ask for
equal obligations and equal punishments from the law with men in case of
infraction of the same law by either party. They ask for an equal system
of morals, founded on utility instead of caprice and unreasoning
despotism, in which the same action, attended with the same
consequences, whether done by man or woman, should be attended with the
same portion of approbation or disapprobation; in which every pleasure,
accompanied or followed by no preponderant evil, should be equally
permitted to women and to men; in which every pleasure accompanied or
followed by preponderant evil should be equally censured in women and in
men."
[47] A period of transition not the less necessary although it is
certainly disastrous and tends to produce an unwholesome tension between
the sexes so long as men and women do not receive equal payment for
equal work. "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever," as a working man in
Blackburn lately put it, "but when the thing of beauty takes to doing
the work for 16s. a week that you have been paid 22s. for, you do not
feel as if you cannot live without possessing that thing of beauty all
to yourself, or that you are willing to lay your life and your fortune
(when you have one) at its feet." On the other hand, the working girl in
the same town often complains that a man will not look at a girl unless
she is a "four-loom weaver," earning, that is, perhaps, 20s. or 25s. a
week.
[48] See the very interesting work of Alfred Espinas, _Des Sociétés
Animales_, which contains many fruitful suggestions for the student of
human sociology.
[49] The subtle and complex character of the sexual relationships in a
high civilization, and the unhappy results of their State regulation,
was well expressed by Wilhehm von Humboldt in his _Ideen zu einen
Versuch, die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staates zu bestimmen_, so long
ago as 1792: "A union so closely allied with the very nature of the
respective individuals must be attended with the most hurtful
consequences when the State attempts to regulate it by law, or, through
the force of its institutions, to make it repose on anything save simple
inclination. When we remember, moreover, that the State can only
contemplate the final results of such regulations on the race, we shall
be still more ready to admit the justice of this conclusion. It may
reasonably be argued that a solicitude for the race only conducts to the
same results as the highest solicitude for the most beautiful
development of the inner man. For after careful observation it has been
found that the uninterrupted union of one man with one woman is most
beneficial to the race, and it is likewise undeniable that no other
union springs from true, natural, harmonious love. And further, it may
be observed that such love leads to the same results as those very
relations which law and custom tend to establish. The radical error
seems to be that the law commands; whereas such a relation cannot mould
itself according to external arrangements, but depends wholly on
inclination; and wherever coercion or guidance comes into collision with
inclination, they divert it still farther from the proper path.
Wherefore it appears to me that the State should not only loosen the
bonds in this instance, and leave ampler freedom to the citizen, but
that it should entirely withdraw its active solicitude from the
institution of marriage, and both generally and in its particular
modifications, should rather leave it wholly to the free choice of the
individuals, and the various contracts they may enter into with respect
to it. I should not be deterred from the adoption of this principle by
the fear that all family relations might be disturbed, for although such
a fear might be justified by considerations of particular circumstances
and localities, it could not fairly be entertained in an inquiry into
the nature of men and States in general. For experience frequently
convinces us that just where law has imposed no fetters, morality most
surely binds; the idea of external coercion is one entirely foreign to
an institution which, like marriage, reposes only on inclination and an
inward sense of duty; and the results of such coercive institutions do
not at all correspond to the intentions in which they originate."
[50] Such register should, as Bertillon rightly insisted, be of the most
complete description--setting forth all the anthropological traits of
the contracting parties--so that the characteristics of a human group at
any time and place may be studied and compared. Registration of this
kind would, beside its more obvious convenience, form an almost
indispensable guide to the higher evolution of the race. I may here add
that I have assumed, perhaps too rashly, that the natural tendency among
civilized men and women is towards a monogamic and more or less
permanent union; preceded, it may be in most individuals, by a more
restless period of experiment. Undoubtedly, many variations will arise
in the future, leading to more complex relationships. Such variations
cannot be foreseen, and when they arise they will still have to prove
their stability and their advantage to the race.
[51] As among geese, and, occasionally, it is said, among elephants.
III
THE NEW ASPECT OF THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT
Eighteenth-Century France--Pioneers of the Woman's Movement--The
Growth of the Woman's Suffrage Movement--The Militant Activities of
the Suffragettes--Their Services and Disservices to the
Cause--Advantages of Women's Suffrage--Sex Questions in
Germany--Bebel--The Woman's Rights Movement in Germany--The
Development of Sexual Science in Germany--the Movement for the
Protection of Motherhood--Ellen Key--The Question of
Illegitimacy--Eugenics--Women as Law-makers in the Home.
I
The modern conception of the political equality of women with men, we
have seen, arose in France in the second half of the eighteenth century.
Its way was prepared by the philosophic thinkers of the _Encyclopédie_,
and the idea was definitely formulated by some of the finest minds of
the age, notably by Condorcet,[52] as part of the great new programme of
social and political reform which was to some small degree realized in
the upheaval of the Revolution. The political emancipation of women
constituted no part of the Revolution. It has indeed been maintained,
and perhaps with reason, that the normal development of the
revolutionary spirit would probably have ended in vanquishing the claim
of masculine predominance if war had not diverted the movement of
revolution by transforming it into the Terror. Even as it was, the
rights of women were not without their champions even at this period. We
ought specially to remember Olympe de Gouges, whose name is sometimes
dismissed too contemptuously. With all her defects of character and
education and literary style, Olympe de Gouges, as is now becoming
recognized, was, in her biographer's words, "one of the loftiest and
most generous souls of the epoch," in some respects superior to Madame
Roland. She was the first woman to demand of the Revolution that it
should be logical by proclaiming the rights of woman side by side with
those of her equal, man, and in so doing she became the great pioneer of
the feminist movement of to-day.[53] She owes the position more
especially to her little pamphlet, issued in 1791, entitled _Déclaration
des Droits de la Femme_. It is this _Déclaration_ which contains the
oft-quoted (or misquoted) saying: "Women have the right to ascend the
scaffold; they must also have the right to ascend the tribune." Two
years later she had herself ascended the scaffold, but the other right
she claimed is only now beginning to be granted to women. At that time
there were too many more pressing matters to be dealt with, and the only
women who had been taught to demand the rights of their sex were
precisely those whom the Revolution was guillotining or exiling. Even
had it been otherwise, we may be quite sure that Napoleon, the heir of
the Revolution and the final arbiter of what was to be permanent in its
achievements, would have sternly repressed any political freedom
accorded to women. The only freedom he cared to grant to women was the
freedom to produce food for cannon, and so far as lay in his power he
sought to crush the political activities of women even in literature, as
we see in his treatment of Mme de Staël.[54]
An Englishwoman of genius was in Paris at the time of the Revolution,
with as broad a conception of the place of woman side by side with man
as Olympe de Gouges, while for the most part she was Olympe's superior.
In 1792, a year after the _Déclaration des Droits de la Femme_, Mary
Wollstonecraft--it is possible to some extent inspired by the brief
_Déclaration_--published her _Vindication of the Rights of Women_. It
was not a shrill outcry, nor an attack on men--in that indeed
resembling the _Déclaration_--but just the book of a woman, a wise and
sensible woman, who discusses many women's questions from a woman's
point of view, and desires civil and political rights, not as a panacea
for all evils, but simply because, as she argues, humanity cannot
progress as a whole while one half of it is semi-educated and only half
free. There can be little doubt that if the later advocates of woman's
suffrage could have preserved more of Mary Wollstonecraft's sanity,
moderation, and breadth of outlook, they would have diminished the
difficulties that beset the task of convincing the community generally.
Mary Wollstonecraft was, however, the inspired pioneer of a great
movement which slowly gained force and volume.[55] During the long
Victorian period the practical aims of this movement went chiefly into
the direction of improving the education of girls so as to make it, so
far as possible, like that of boys. In this matter an immense revolution
was slowly accomplished, involving the entrance of women into various
professions and employments hitherto reserved to men. That was a very
necessary preliminary to the extension of the franchise to women. The
suffrage propaganda could not, moreover, fail to benefit by the better
education of women and their increased activity in public life. It was
their activity, indeed, far more than the skill of the women who fought
for the franchise, which made the political emancipation of women
inevitable, and the noble and brilliant women who through the middle of
the nineteenth century recreated the educational system for women, and
so prepared them to play their proper part in life, were the best women
workers the cause of women's enfranchisement ever had. There was,
however, one distinguished friend of the emancipation of women whose
advocacy of the cause at this period was of immense value. It is now
nearly half a century since John Stuart Mill--inspired, like Thompson,
by a woman--wrote his _Subjection of Women_, and it may undoubtedly be
said that since that date no book on this subject published in any
country--with the single exception of Bebel's _Woman_--has been so
widely read or so influential. The support of this distinguished and
authoritative thinker gave to the woman's movement a stamp of
aristocratic intellectuality very valuable in a land where even the
finest minds are apt to be afflicted by the disease of timidity, and was
doubtless a leading cause of the cordial reception which in England the
idea of women's political emancipation has long received among
politicians. Bebel's book, speedily translated into English, furnished
the plebeian complement to Mill's.
The movement for the education of women and their introduction into
careers previously monopolized by men inevitably encouraged the movement
for extending the franchise to women. This political reform was
remarkably successful in winning over the politicians, and not those of
one party only. In England, since Mill published his _Subjection of
Women_ in 1869, there have always been eminent statesmen convinced of
the desirability of granting the franchise to women, and among the rank
and file of Members of Parliament, irrespective of party, a very large
proportion have pledged themselves to the same cause. The difficulty,
therefore, in introducing woman's suffrage into England has not been
primarily in Parliament. The one point, at which political party feeling
has caused obstruction--and it is certainly a difficult and important
point--is the method by which woman's suffrage should be introduced.
Each party--Conservative, Liberal, Labour--naturally enough desires that
this great new voting force should first be applied at a point which
would not be likely to injure its own party interests. It is probable
that in each party the majority of the leaders are of opinion that the
admission of female voters is inevitable and perhaps desirable; the
dispute is as to the extent to which the floodgates should in the first
place be opened. In accordance with English tradition, some kind of
compromise, however illogical, suggests itself as the safest first step,
but the dispute remains as to the exact class of women who should be
first admitted and the exact extent to which entrance should be granted
to them.
The dispute of the gate-keepers would, however, be easily overcome if
the pressure behind the gate were sufficiently strong. But it is not.
However large a proportion of the voters in Great Britain may be in
favour of women's franchise, it is certain that only a very minute
percentage regard this as a question having precedency over all other
questions. And the reason why men have only taken a very temperate
interest in woman's suffrage is that women themselves, in the mass, have
taken an equally temperate interest in the matter when they have not
been actually hostile to the movement. It may indeed be said, even at
the present time, that whenever an impartial poll is taken of a large
miscellaneous group of women, only a minority are found to be in favour
of woman's suffrage.[56] No significant event has occurred to stimulate
general interest in the matter, and no supremely eloquent or influential
voice has artificially stirred it. There has been no woman of Mary
Wollstonecraft's genius and breadth of mind who has devoted herself to
the cause, and since Mill the men who have made up their minds on this
side have been content to leave the matter to the women's associations
formed for securing the success of the cause. These associations have,
however, been led by women of a past generation, who, while of
unquestionable intellectual power and high moral character, have viewed
the woman question in a somewhat narrow, old-fashioned spirit, and have
not possessed the gift of inspiring enthusiasm. Thus the growth of the
movement, however steady it may have been, has been slow. John Stuart
Mill's remark, in a letter to Bain in 1869, remains true to-day: "The
most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women
themselves."
In the meanwhile in some other countries where, except in the United
States, it was of much more recent growth, the woman's suffrage movement
has achieved success, with no great expenditure of energy. It has been
introduced into several American States and Territories. It is
established throughout Australasia. It is also established in Norway. In
Finland women may not only vote, but also sit in Parliament.
It was in these conditions that the Women's Social and Political Union
was formed in London. It was not an offshoot from any existing woman's
suffrage society, but represented a crystallization of new elements. For
the most part, even its leaders had not previously taken any active part
in the movement for woman's suffrage. The suffrage movement had need of
exactly such an infusion of fresh and ardent blood; so that the new
society was warmly welcomed, and met with immediate success, finding
recruits alike among the rich and the poor. Its unconventional methods,
its eager and militant spirit, were felt to supply a lacking element,
and the first picturesque and dashing exploits of the Union were on the
whole well received. The obvious sincerity and earnestness of these very
fresh recruits covered the rashness of their new and rather ignorant
enthusiasm.
But a hasty excess of ardour only befits a first uncalculated outburst
of youthfulness. It is quite another matter when it is deliberately
hardened into a rigid routine, and becomes an organized method of
creating disorder for the purpose of advertising a grievance in season
and out of season. Since, moreover, the attack was directed chiefly
against politicians, precisely that class of the community most inclined
to be favourable to woman's suffrage, the wrong-headedness of the
movement becomes as striking as its offensiveness.
The effect on the early friends of the new movement was inevitable.
Some, who had hailed it with enthusiasm and proclaimed its pioneers as
new Joans of Arc, changed their tone to expostulation and protest, and
finally relapsed into silence. Other friends of the movement, even among
its former leaders, were less silent. They have revealed to the world,
too unkindly, some of the influences which slowly corrupt such a
movement from the inside when it hardens into sectarianism: the
narrowing of aim, the increase of conventionality, the jealousy of
rivals, the tendency to morbid emotionalism.
It is easy to exaggerate the misdeeds and the weaknesses of the
suffragettes. It is undoubtedly true that they have alienated, in an
increasing degree, the sympathies of the women of highest character and
best abilities among the advocates of woman's suffrage. Nearly all
Englishwomen to-day who stand well above the average in mental
distinction are in favour of woman's suffrage, though they may not
always be inclined to take an active part in securing it. Perhaps the
only prominent exception is Mrs. Humphry Ward. Yet they rarely associate
themselves with the methods of the suffragettes. They do not, indeed,
protest, for they feel there would be a kind of disloyalty in fighting
against the Extreme Left of a movement to which they themselves belong;
but they stand aloof. The women who are chiefly attracted to the ranks
of the suffragettes belong to three classes: (1) Those of the well-to-do
class with no outlet for their activities, who eagerly embrace an
exciting occupation which has become, not only highly respectable, but
even, in a sense, fashionable; they have no natural tendency to excess,
but are easily moved by their social environment; some of these are
rich, and the great principle--once formulated in an unhappy moment
concerning a rich lady interested in social reform--"We must not kill
the goose that lays the golden eggs," has never been despised by the
suffragette leaders; (2) the rowdy element among women which is not so
much moved to adopt the methods for the sake of the cause as to adopt
the cause for the sake of the methods, so that in the case of their
special emotional temperament it may be said, reversing an ancient
phrase, that the means justify the end; this element of noisy
explosiveness, always found in a certain proportion of women, though
latent under ordinary circumstances, is easily aroused by stimulation,
and in every popular revolt the wildest excesses are the acts of women.
(3) In this small but important group we find women of rare and
beautiful character who, hypnotized by the enthralling influence of an
idea, and often having no great intellectual power of their own, are
even unconscious of the vulgarity that accompanies them, and gladly
sacrifice themselves to a cause that seems to be sacred; these are the
saints and martyrs of every movement.
When we thus analyse the suffragette outburst we see that it is really
compounded out of quite varied elements: a conventionally respectable
element, a rowdy element, and an ennobling element. It is, therefore,
equally unreasonable to denounce its vices or to idealize its virtues.
It is more profitable to attempt to balance its services and its
disservices to the cause of women's suffrage.
Looked at dispassionately, the two main disadvantages of the suffragette
agitation--and they certainly seem at the first glance very
comprehensive objections--lie in its direction and in its methods. There
are two vast bodies of people who require to be persuaded in order to
secure woman's suffrage: first women themselves, and secondly their
men-folk, who at present monopolize the franchise. Until the majority of
both men and women are educated to understand the justice and
reasonableness of this step, and until men are persuaded that the time
has come for practical action, the most violent personal assaults on
cabinet ministers--supposing such political methods to be otherwise
unobjectionable--are beside the mark. They are aimed in the wrong
direction. This is so even when we leave aside the fact that
politicians are sufficiently converted already. The primary task of
women suffragists is to convert their own sex. Indeed it may be said
that that is their whole task. Whenever the majority of women are
persuaded that they ought to possess the vote, we may be quite sure that
they will communicate that persuasion to their men-folk who are able to
give them the vote. The conversion of the majority of women to a belief
in women's suffrage is essential to its attainment because it is only by
the influence of the women who belong to him, whom he knows and loves
and respects, that the average man is likely to realize that, as Ellen
Key puts it, "a ballot paper in itself no more injures the delicacy of a
woman's hand than a cooking recipe." The antics of women in the street,
however earnest those women may be, only leave him indifferent, even
hostile, at most, amused.
It may be added that in any case it would be undesirable, even if
possible, to bestow the suffrage on women so long as only a minority
have the wish to exercise it. It would be contrary to sound public
policy. It would not only discredit political rights, but it would tend
to give the woman's vote too narrow and one-sided a character. To grant
women the right to vote is a different matter from granting women the
right to enter a profession. In order to give women the right to be
doctors or lawyers it is not necessary that women generally should be
convinced of the advantage of such a step. The matter chiefly concerns
the very small number of women who desire the privilege. But the women
who vote will be in some measure legislating for women generally, and it
is therefore necessary that women generally should participate.
But even if it is admitted--although, as we have seen, there is a
twofold reason for not making such an admission--that the suffragettes
are justified in regarding politicians as the obstacles in the way of
their demands, there still remains the question of the disadvantage of
their method. This method is by some euphemistically described as the
introduction of "nagging" into politics; but even at this mild estimate
of its character the question may still be asked whether the method is
calculated to attain the desired end. One hears women suffragettes
declare that this is the only kind of argument men understand. There is,
however, in the masculine mind--and by no means least when it is
British--an element which strongly objects to be worried and bullied
even into a good course of action. The suffragettes have done their best
to stimulate that element of obstinacy. Even among men who viewed the
matter from an unprejudiced standpoint many felt that, necessary as
woman's suffrage is, the policy of the suffragettes rendered the moment
unfavourable for its adoption. It is a significant fact that in the
countries which have so far granted women the franchise no methods in
the slightest degree resembling those of the suffragettes have ever been
practised. It is not easy to imagine Australia tolerating such methods,
and in Finland full Parliamentary rights were freely granted, as is
generally recognized, precisely as a mark of gratitude for women's
helpfulness in standing side by side with their men in a great political
struggle. The policy of obstruction adopted by the English suffragettes,
with its "tactics" of opposing at election times the candidates of the
very party whose leaders they are imploring to grant them the franchise,
was so foolish that it is little wonder that many doubted whether women
at all understand the methods of politics, or are yet fitted to take a
responsible part in political life.
The suffragette method of persuading public men seems to be, on the
whole, futile, even if it were directed at the proper quarter, and even
if it were in itself a justifiable method. But it would be possible to
grant these "ifs" and still to feel that a serious injury is done to the
cause of woman's suffrage when the method of violence is adopted by
women. Some suffragettes have argued, in this matter, that in political
crises men also have acted just as badly or worse. But, even if we
assume that this is the case,[57] it has been one of the chief arguments
hitherto for the admission of women into political life that they
exercise an elevating and refining influence, so that their entrance
into this field will serve to purify politics. That, no doubt, is an
argument mostly brought forward by men, and may be regarded as, in some
measure, an amiable masculine delusion, since most of the refining and
elevating elements in civilization probably owe their origin not to
women but to men. But it is not altogether a delusion. In the virtues of
force--however humbly those virtues are to be classed--women, as a sex,
can never be the rivals of men, and when women attempt to gain their
ends by the demonstration of brute force they can only place themselves
at a disadvantage. They are laying down the weapons they know best how
to use, and adopting weapons so unsuitable that they only injure the
users.
Many women, speaking on behalf of the suffragettes, protest against the
idea that women must always be "charming." And if "charm" is to be
understood in so narrow and conventionalized a sense that it means
something which is incompatible with the developed natural activities,
whether of the soul or of the body, then such a protest is amply
justified. But in the larger sense, "charm"--which means the power to
effect work without employing brute force--is indispensable to women.
Charm is a woman's strength just as strength is a man's charm. And the
justification for women in this matter is that herein they represent the
progress of civilization. All civilization involves the substitution in
this respect of the woman's method for the man's. In the last resort a
savage can only assert his rights by brute force. But with the growth of
civilization the wronged man, instead of knocking down his opponent,
employs "charm"; in other words he engages an advocate, who, by the
exercise of sweet reasonableness, persuades twelve men in a box that
his wrongs must be righted, and the matter is then finally settled, not
by man's weapon, the fist, but by woman's weapon, the tongue. Nowadays
the same method of "charm" is being substituted for brute force in
international wrongs, and with the complete substitution of arbitration
for war the woman's method of charm will have replaced the man's method
of brute force along the whole line of legitimate human activity. If we
realize this we can understand why it is that a group of women who, even
in the effort to support a good cause, revert to the crude method of
violence are committing a double wrong. They are wronging their own sex
by proving false to its best traditions, and they are wronging
civilization by attempting to revive methods of savagery which it is
civilization's mission to repress. Therefore it may fairly be held that
even if the methods of the suffragettes were really adequate to secure
women's suffrage, the attainment of the franchise by those methods would
be a misfortune. The ultimate loss would be greater than the gain.
If we hold the foregoing considerations in mind it is difficult to avoid
the conclusion that neither in their direction nor in their nature are
the methods of the suffragettes fitted to attain the end desired. We
have still, however, to consider the other side of the question.
Whenever an old movement receives a strong infusion of new blood,
whatever excesses or mistakes may arise, it is very unlikely that all
the results will be on the same side. It is certainly not so in this
case. Even the opposition to woman's suffrage which the suffragettes
are responsible for, and the Anti-Suffrage societies which they have
called into active existence, are not an unmitigated disadvantage. Every
movement of progress requires a vigorous movement of opposition to
stimulate its progress, and the clash of discussion can only be
beneficial in the end to the progressive cause.
But the immense advantage of the activity of the suffragettes has been
indirect. It has enabled the great mass of ordinary sensible women who
neither join Suffrage societies nor Anti-Suffrage societies to think for
themselves on this question. Until a few years ago, while most educated
women were vaguely aware of the existence of a movement for giving women
the vote, they only knew of it as something rather unpractical and
remote; its reality had never been brought home to them. When women
witnessed the eruption into the streets of a band of women--most of them
apparently women much like themselves--who were so convinced that the
franchise must be granted to women, here and now, that they were
prepared to face publicity, ridicule, and even imprisonment, then "votes
for women" became to them, for the first time, a real and living issue.
In a great many cases, certainly, they realized that they intensely
disliked the people who behaved in this way and any cause that was so
preached. But in a great many other cases they realized, for the first
time definitely, that the demand of votes for women was a reasonable
demand, and that they were themselves suffragists, though they had no
wish to take an active part in the movement, and no real sympathy with
its more "militant" methods. There can be no doubt that in this way the
suffragettes have performed an immense service for the cause of women's
suffrage. It has been for the most part an indirect and undesigned
service, but in the end it will perhaps more than serve to
counterbalance the disadvantages attached to their more conscious
methods and their more deliberate aims.
If, as we may trust, this service will be the main outcome of the
suffragette phase of the women's movement, it is an outcome to be
thankful for; we may then remember with gratitude the ardent enthusiasm
of the suffragettes and forget the foolish and futile ways in which it
was manifested. There has never been any doubt as to the ultimate
adoption of women's suffrage; its gradual extension among the more
progressive countries of the world sufficiently indicates that it will
ultimately reach even to the most backward countries. Its accomplishment
in England has been gradual, although it is here so long since the first
steps were taken, not because there has been some special and malignant
opposition to it on the part of men in general and politicians in
particular, but simply because England is an old and conservative
country, with a very ancient constitutional machinery which effectually
guards against the hasty realization of any scheme of reform. This
particular reform, however, is not an isolated or independent scheme; it
is an essential part of a great movement in the social equalization of
the sexes which has been going on for centuries in our civilization, a
movement such as may be correspondingly traced in the later stages of
the civilizations of antiquity. Such a movement we may by our efforts
help forward, we may for a while retard, but it is a part of
civilization, and it would be idle to imagine that we can affect the
ultimate issue.
That the issue of women's suffrage may be reached in England within a
reasonable period is much to be desired for the sake of the woman's
movement in the larger sense, which has nothing to do with politics, and
is now impeded by this struggle. The enfranchisement of women, Miss
Frances Cobbe declared thirty years ago, is "the crown and completion"
of all progress in women's movement. "Votes for women," exclaims, more
youthfully but not less unreasonably, Miss Christabel Pankhurst, "means
a new Heaven and a new Earth." But women's suffrage no more means a new
Heaven or even a new Earth than it means, as other people fear, a new
Purgatory and a new Hell. We may see this quite plainly in Australasia.
Women's votes aid in furthering social legislation and contribute to the
passing of acts which have their good side, and, no doubt, like
everything else, their bad side. As Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who devoted
her life to the political enfranchisement of women, declared, the ballot
is, at most, only the vestibule to women's emancipation. Man's suffrage
has not introduced the millennium, and it is foolish to suppose that
woman's suffrage can. It is merely an act of justice and a reasonable
condition of social hygiene.
The attainment of the suffrage, if it is a beginning and not an end,
will thus have a real and positive value in liberating the woman's
movement from a narrow and sterilizing phase of its course. In England,
especially, the woman's movement has in the past largely confined itself
to imitating men and to obtaining the same work and the same rights as
men. Putting the matter more broadly, it may be said that it has been
the aim of the woman's movement to secure woman's claims as a human
being rather than as woman. But that is only half the task of the
woman's movement, and perhaps not the most essential half. Women can
never be like men, any more than men can be like women. It is their
unlikeness which renders them indispensable to each other, and which
also makes it imperative that each sex should have its due share in
moulding the conditions of life. Woman's function in life can never be
the same as man's, if only because women are the mothers of the race.
That is the point, the only point, at which women have an uncontested
supremacy over men. The most vital problem before our civilization
to-day is the problem of motherhood, the question of creating the human
beings best fitted for modern life, the practical realization of a sound
eugenics. Manouvrier, the distinguished anthropologist, who carries
feminism to its extreme point in the scientific sphere, yet recognizes
the fundamental fact that "a woman's part is to make children." But he
clearly perceives also that "in all its extent and all its consequences
that part is not surpassed in importance, in difficulty, or in dignity,
by the man's part." On the contrary it is a part which needs "an amount
of intelligence incontestably superior, and by far, to that required by
most masculine occupations."[58] We are here at the core of the woman's
movement. And the full fruition of that movement means that women, by
virtue of their supremacy in this matter, shall take their proper share
in legislation for life, not as mere sexless human beings, but as women,
and in accordance with the essential laws of their own nature as women.
II
There is a further question. Is it possible to discern the actual
embodiment of this new phase of the woman movement? I think it is.
To those who are accustomed to watch the emotional pulse of mankind,
nothing has seemed so remarkable during recent years as the eruption of
sex questions in Germany. We had always been given to understand that
the sphere of women and the laws of marriage had been definitely
prescribed and fixed in Germany for at least two thousand years, since
the days of Tacitus, in fact, and with the best possible results.
Germans assured the world in stentorian tones that only in Germany could
young womanhood be seen in all its purity, and that in the German
_Hausfrau_ the supreme ideal had been reached, the woman whose great
mission is to keep alive the perennial fire of the ancient German
hearth. Here and there, indeed, the quiet voice of science was heard in
Germany; thus Schrader, the distinguished investigator of Teutonic
origins, in commenting on the oft-quoted testimony of Tacitus to the
chastity of the German women, has appositely referred to the detailed
evidences furnished by the Committee of pastors of the Evangelical
Church as to the extreme prevalence of unchastity among the women of
rural Germany, and argued that these widespread customs must be very
ancient and deep-rooted.[59] But Germans in general refused to admit that
Tacitus had only used the idea of German virtue as a stick to beat his
own fellow-countrywomen with.
The Social-Democratic movement, which has so largely overspread
industrial and even intellectual Germany, prepared the way for a less
traditional and idealistic way of feeling in regard to these questions.
The publication by Bebel of a book, _Die Frau_, in which the leader of
the German Social-Democratic party set forth the Socialist doctrine of
the position of women in society, marked the first stage in the new
movement. This book exercised a wide influence, more especially on
uncritical readers. It is, indeed, from a scientific point of view a
worthless book--if a book in which genuine emotions are brought to the
cause of human freedom and social righteousness may ever be so
termed--but it struck a rude blow at the traditions of Teutonic
sentiment. With something of the rough tone and temper of the great
peasant who initiated the German Reformation, a man who had himself
sprung from the people, and who knew of what he was speaking, here set
down in downright fashion the actual facts as to the position of women
in Germany, as well as what he conceived to be the claims of justice in
regard to that position, slashing with equal vigour alike at the
absurdities of conventional marriage and of prostitution, the obverse
and the reverse, he declared, of a false society. The emotional
renaissance with which we are here concerned seems to have no special
and certainly no exclusive association with the Social-Democratic
movement, but it can scarcely be doubted that the permeation of a great
mass of the German people by the socialistic conceptions which in their
bearing on women have been rendered so familiar by Bebel's exposition
has furnished, as it were, a ready-made sounding-board which has given
resonance and effect to voices which might otherwise have been quickly
lost in vacuity.
There is another movement which counts for something in the renaissance
we are here concerned with, though for considerably less than one might
be led to expect. What is specifically known as the "woman's rights'
movement" is in no degree native to Germany, though Hippel is one of the
pioneers of the woman's movement, and it is only within recent years
that it has reached Germany. It is alien to the Teutonic feminine mind,
because in Germany the spheres of men and women are so far apart and so
unlike that the ideal of imitating men fails to present itself to a
German woman's mind. The delay, moreover, in the arrival of the woman's
movement in Germany had given time for a clearer view of that movement
and a criticism of its defects to form even in the lands of its origin,
so that the German woman can no longer be caught unawares by the cry for
woman's rights. Still, however qualified a view might be taken of its
benefits, it had to be recognized, even in Germany, that it was an
inevitable movement, and to some extent at all events indispensable from
the woman's point of view. The same right to education as men, the same
rights of public meeting and discussion, the same liberty to enter the
liberal professions, these are claims which during recent years have
been widely made by German women and to some extent secured, while--as
is even more significant--they are for the most part no longer very
energetically disputed. The International Congress of Women which met in
Berlin in 1904 was a revelation to the citizens of Berlin of the skill
and dignity with which women could organize a congress and conduct
business meetings. It was notable, moreover, in that, though under the
auspices of an International Council, it showed the large number of
German women who are already entitled to take a leading part in the
movements for women's welfare. Both directly and indirectly, indeed,
such a movement cannot be otherwise than specially beneficial in
Germany. The Teutonic reverence for woman, the assertion of the "aliquid
divinum," has sometimes been accompanied by the openly expressed
conviction that she is a fool. Outside Germany it would not be easy to
find the representative philosophers of a nation putting forward so
contemptuous a view of women as is set forth by Schopenhauer or by
Nietzsche, while even within recent years a German physician of some
ability, the late Dr. Möbius, published a book on the "physiological
weak-mindedness of women."
The new feminine movement in Germany has received highly important
support from the recent development of German science. The German
intellect, exceedingly comprehensive in its outlook, ploddingly
thorough, and imperturbably serious, has always taken the leading and
pioneering part in the investigation of sexual problems, whether from
the standpoint of history, biology, or pathology. Early in the
nineteenth century, when even more courage and resolution were needed to
face the scientific study of such questions than is now the case, German
physicians, unsupported by any co-operation in other countries, were the
pioneers in exploring the paths of sexual pathology.[60] From the
antiquarian side, Bachofen, more than half a century ago, put forth his
conception of the exalted position of the primitive mother which,
although it has been considerably battered by subsequent research, has
been by no means without its value, and is of special significance from
the present standpoint, because it sprang from precisely the same view
of life as that animating the German women who are to-day inaugurating
the movement we are here concerned with. From the medical side the late
Professor Krafft-Ebing of Vienna and Dr. Albert Moll of Berlin are
recognized throughout the world as leading authorities on sexual
pathology, and in recent times many other German physicians of the first
authority can be named in this field; while in Austria Dr. F.S. Krauss
and his coadjutors in the annual volumes of _Anthropophyteia_ are
diligently exploring the rich and fruitful field of sexual folk-lore.
The large volumes of the _Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, edited
by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld of Berlin, have presented discussions of the
commonest of sexual aberrations with a scientific and scholarly
thoroughness, a practical competence, as well as admirable tone, which
we may seek in vain in other countries. In Vienna, moreover, Professor
Freud, with his bold and original views on the sexual causation of many
abnormal mental and nervous conditions, and his psycho-analytic method
of investigating and treating them, although his doctrines are by no
means universally accepted, is yet exerting a revolutionary influence
all over the world. During the last ten years, indeed, the amount of
German scientific and semi-scientific literature, dealing with every
aspect of the sexual question, and from every point of view, is
altogether unparalleled. It need scarcely be said that much of this
literature is superficial or worthless. But much of it is sound, and it
would seem that on the whole it is this portion of it which is most
popular. Thus Dr. August Forel, formerly professor of psychiatry at
Zurich and a physician of world-wide reputation, published a few years
ago at Munich a book on the sexual question, _Die Sexuelle Frage_, in
which all the questions of the sexual life, biological, medical, and
social, are seriously discussed with no undue appeal to an ignorant
public; it had an immediate success and a large sale. Dr. Forel had not
entered this field before; he had merely come to the conclusion that
every man at the end of his life ought to set forth his observations and
conclusions regarding the most vital of questions. Again, at about the
same time, Dr. Iwan Bloch, of Berlin, published his many-sided work on
the sexual life of our time, _Das Sexualleben Unserer Zeit_, a work less
remarkable than Forel's for the weight of the personal authority
expressed, but more remarkable by the range of its learning and the
sympathetic attitude it displayed towards the best movements of the day;
this book also met with great success.[61] Still more recently (1912) Dr.
Albert Moll, with characteristic scientific thoroughness, has edited,
and largely himself written, a truly encyclopædic _Handbuch der
Sexualwissenschaften_. The eminence of the writers of these books and
the mental calibre needed to read them suffice to show that we are not
concerned, as a careless observer might suppose, with a matter of supply
and demand in prurient literature, but with the serious and widespread
appreciation of serious investigations. This same appreciation is shown
not only by several bio-sociological periodicals of high scientific
quality, but by the existence of a journal like _Sexual-Probleme_,
edited by Dr. Max Marcuse, a journal with many distinguished
contributors, and undoubtedly the best periodical in this field to be
found in any language.
At the same time the new movement of German women, however it may arise
from or be supported by political or scientific movements, is
fundamentally emotional in its character. If we think of it, every great
movement of the Teutonic soul has been rooted in emotion. The German
literary renaissance of the eighteenth century was emotional in its
origin and received its chief stimulus from the contagion of the new
irruption of sentiment in France. Even German science is often
influenced, and not always to its advantage, by German sentiment. The
Reformation is an example on a huge scale of the emotional force which
underlies German movements. Luther, for good and for evil, is the most
typical of Germans, and the Luther who made his mark in the world--the
shrewd, coarse, superstitious peasant who blossomed into genius--was an
avalanche of emotion, a great mass of natural human instincts
irresistible in their impetuosity. When we bear in mind this general
tendency to emotional expansiveness in the manifestations of the
Teutonic soul we need feel no surprise that the present movement among
German women should be, to a much greater extent than the corresponding
movements in other countries, an emotional renaissance. It is not, first
and last, a cry for political rights, but for emotional rights, and for
the reasonable regulation of all those social functions which are
founded on the emotions.[62]
This movement, although it may properly be said to be German, since its
manifestations are mainly exhibited in the great German Empire, is yet
essentially a Teutonic movement in the broader sense of the word.
Germans of Austria, Germans of Switzerland, Dutch women, Scandinavians,
have all been drawn into this movement. But it is in Germany proper that
they all find the chief field of their activities.
If we attempt to define in a single sentence the specific object of this
agitation we may best describe it as based on the demands of woman the
mother, and as directed to the end of securing for her the right to
control and regulate the personal and social relations which spring from
her nature as mother or possible mother. Therein we see at once both the
intimately emotional and practical nature of this new claim and its
decisive unlikeness to the earlier woman movement. That was definitely a
demand for emancipation; political enfranchisement was its goal; its
perpetual assertion was that women must be allowed to do everything
that men do. But the new Teutonic woman's movement, so far from making
as its ideal the imitation of men, bases itself on that which most
essentially marks the woman as unlike the man.
The basis of the movement is significantly indicated by the title,
_Mutterschutz_--the protection of the mother--originally borne by "a
Journal for the reform of sexual morals," established in 1905, edited by
Dr. Helene Stöcker, of Berlin, and now called _Die Neue Generation_. All
the questions that radiate outwards from the maternal function are here
discussed: the ethics of love, prostitution ancient and modern, the
position of illegitimate mothers and illegitimate children, sexual
hygiene, the sexual instruction of the young, etc. It must not be
supposed that these matters are dealt with from the standpoint of a
vigilance society for combating vice. The demand throughout is for the
regulation of life, for reform, but for reform quite as much in the
direction of expansion as of restraint. On many matters of detail,
indeed, there is no agreement among these writers, some of whom approach
the problems from the social and practical side, some from the
psychological and philosophic side, others from the medical, legal, or
historical sides.
This journal was originally the organ of the association for the
protection of mothers, more especially unmarried mothers, called the
_Bund für Mutterschutz_. There are many agencies for dealing with
illegitimate children, but the founders of this association started from
the conviction that it is only through the mother that the child can be
adequately cared for. As nearly a tenth of the children born in Germany
are illegitimate, and the conditions of life into which such children
are thrown are in the highest degree unfavourable, the question has its
actuality.[63] It is the aim of the _Bund für Mutterschutz_ to
rehabilitate the unmarried mother, to secure for her the conditions of
economic independence--whatever social class she may belong to--and
ultimately to effect a change in the legal status of illegitimate
mothers and children alike. The Bund, which is directed by a committee
in which social, medical, and legal interests are alike represented,
already possesses numerous branches, in addition to its head-quarters in
Berlin, and is beginning to initiate practical measures on the lines of
its programme, notably Homes for Mothers, of which it has established
nearly a dozen in different parts of Germany.
In 1911 the first International Congress for the Protection of Mothers
and for Sexual Reform was held at Dresden, in connection with the great
Exhibition of Hygiene. As a result of this Congress, an International
Union was constituted, representing Germany, Austria, Italy, Sweden, and
Holland, which may probably be taken to be the countries which have so
far manifested greatest interest in the programme of sexual reform based
on recognition of the supreme importance of motherhood. This movement
may, therefore, be said to have overcome the initial difficulties, the
antagonism, the misunderstanding, and the opprobrium, which every
movement in the field of sexual reform inevitably encounters, and often
succumbs to.
It would be a mistake to regard this Association as a merely
philanthropic movement. It claims to be "An Association for the Reform
of Sexual Ethics," and _Die Neue Generation_ deals with social and
ethical rather than with philanthropic questions. In these respects it
reflects the present attitude of many thoughtful German women, though
the older school of women's rights advocates still holds aloof. We may
here, for instance, find a statement of the recent discussion
concerning the right of the mother to destroy her offspring before
birth. This has been boldly claimed for women by Countess Gisela von
Streitberg, who advocates a return to the older moral view which
prevailed not only in classic antiquity, but even, under certain
conditions, in Christian practice, until Canon law, asserting that the
embryo had from the first an independent life, pronounced abortion under
all circumstances a crime. Countess von Streitberg takes the standpoint
that as the chief risks and responsibilities must necessarily rest upon
the woman, it is for her to decide whether she will permit the embryo
she bears to develop. Dr. Marie Raschke, taking up the discussion from
the legal side, is unable to agree that abortion should cease to be a
punishable offence, though she advocates considerable modifications in
the law on this matter. Dr. Siegfried Weinberg, summarizing this
discussion, again from the legal standpoint, considers that there is
considerable right on the Countess's side, because from the modern
juridical standpoint a criminal enactment is only justified because it
protects a right, and in law the embryo possesses no rights which can be
injured. From the moral standpoint, also, it is argued, its destruction
often becomes justifiable in the interests of the community.
This debatable question, while instructive as an example of the radical
manner in which German women are now beginning to face moral questions,
deals only with an isolated point which has hardly yet reached the
sphere of practical politics.[64] It is more interesting to consider the
general conceptions which underlie this movement, and we can hardly do
this better than by studying the writings of Ellen Key, who is not only
one of its recognized leaders, but may be said to present its aims and
ideals in a broader and more convinced manner than any other writer.
Ellen Key's views are mainly contained in three books, _Love and
Marriage_, _The Century of the Child_, and _The Women's Movement_, in
which form they enjoy a large circulation, and are now becoming well
known, through translations, in England and America. She carefully
distinguishes her aims from what she regards as the American conception
of progress in woman's movements, that is to say the tendency for women
to seek to capture the activities which may be much more adequately
fulfilled by the other sex, while at the same time neglecting the far
weightier matters that concern their own sex. Man and woman are not
natural enemies who need to waste their energies in fighting over their
respective rights and privileges; in spiritual as in physical life they
are only fruitful together. Women, indeed, need free scope for their
activities--and the earlier aspirations of feminism are thus
justified--but they need it, not to wrest away any tasks that men may be
better fitted to perform, but to play their part in that field of
creative life which is peculiarly their own. Ellen Key would say that
the highest human unit is triune: father, mother, and child. Marriage,
therefore, instead of being, as it is to-day, the last thing to be
thought of in education, becomes the central point of life. In Ellen
Key's conception, "those who love each other are man and wife," and by
love she means not a temporary inclination, but "a synthesis of desire
and friendship," just as the air is a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen. It
must be this for both sexes alike, and Ellen Key sees a real progress in
what seems to her the modern tendency for men to realize that the soul
has its erotic side, and for women to realize that the senses have. She
has no special sympathy with the cry for purity in masculine candidates
for marriage put forward by some women of the present day. She observes
that many men who have painfully struggled to maintain this ideal meet
with disillusion, for it is not the masculine lamb, but much more the
spotted leopard, who fascinates women. The notion that women have higher
moral instincts than men Ellen Key regards as absurd. The majority of
Frenchwomen, she remarks, were against Dreyfus, and the majority of
Englishwomen approved the South African war. The really fundamental
difference between man and woman is that he can usually give his best as
a creator, and she as a lover, that his value is according to his work
and hers according to her love. And in love the demand for each sex
alike must not be primarily for a mere anatomical purity, but for
passion and for sincerity.
The aim of love, as understood by Ellen Key, is always marriage and the
child, and as soon as the child comes into question society and the
State are concerned. Before fruition, love is a matter for the lovers
alone, and the espionage, ceremony, and routine now permitted or
enjoined are both ridiculous and offensive. "The flower of love belongs
to the lovers, and should remain their secret; it is the fruit of love
which brings them into relation to society." The dominating importance
of the child, the parent of the race to be, alone makes the immense
social importance of sexual union. It is not marriage which sanctifies
generation, but generation which sanctifies marriage. From the point of
view of "the sanctity of generation" and the welfare of the race, Ellen
Key looks forward to a time when it will be impossible for a man and
woman to become parents when they are unlikely to produce a healthy
child, though she is opposed to Neo-Malthusian methods, partly on
æsthetic grounds and partly on the more dubious grounds of doubt as to
their practical efficiency; it is from this point of view also that she
favours sexual equality in matters of divorce, the legal assimilation of
legitimate and illegitimate children, the recognition of unions outside
marriage,--a recognition already legally established under certain
circumstances in Sweden, in such a way as to confer the rights of
legitimacy on the child,--and she is even prepared to advise women under
some conditions to become mothers outside marriage, though only when
there are obstacles to legal marriage, and as the outcome of deliberate
will and resolution. In these and many similar proposals in detail, set
forth in her earlier books, it is clear that Ellen Key has sometimes
gone beyond the mandate of her central conviction, that love is the
first condition for increasing the vitality alike of the race and of the
individuality, and that the question of love, properly considered, is
the question of creating the future man. As she herself has elsewhere
quite truly pointed out, practice must precede, and precede by a very
long time, the establishment of definite rules in matters of detail.
It will be noticed that a point with which Ellen Key and the leaders of
the new German woman's movement specially concern themselves is the
affectional needs of the "supernumerary" woman and the legitimation of
her children. There is an excess of women over men, in Germany as in
most other countries. That excess, it is said, is balanced by the large
number of women who do not wish to marry. But that is too cheap a
solution of the question. Many women may wish to remain unmarried, but
no woman wishes to be forced to remain unmarried. Every woman, these
advocates of the rights of women claim, has a right to motherhood, and
in exercising the right under sound conditions she is benefiting
society. But our marriage system, in the rigid form which it has long
since assumed, has not now the elasticity necessary to answer these
demands. It presents a solution which is often impossible, always
difficult, and perhaps in a large proportion of cases undesirable. But
for a woman who is shut out from marriage to grasp at the vital facts of
love and motherhood which she perhaps regards, unreasonably or not, as
the supreme things in the world, must often be under such conditions a
disastrous step, while it is always accompanied by certain risks.
Therefore, it is asked, why should there not be, as of old there was, a
relationship established which while of less dignity than marriage, and
less exclusive in its demands, should yet permit a woman to enter into
an honourable, open, and legally recognized relationship with a man?
Such a relationship a woman could proclaim to the whole world, if
necessary, without reflecting any disesteem upon herself or her child,
while it would give her a legal claim on her child's father. Such a
relationship would be substantially the same as the ancient concubinate,
which persisted even in Christendom up to the sixteenth century. Its
establishment in Sweden has apparently been satisfactory, and it is now
sought to extend it to other countries.[65]
It is interesting to compare, or to contrast, the movement of which
Ellen Key has been a conspicuous champion with the futile movement
initiated nearly a century ago by the school of Saint-Simon and Prosper
Enfantin, in favour of "la femme libre."[66] That earlier movement had no
doubt its bright and ideal side, but it was not supported by a sound and
scientific view of life; it was rooted in sand and soon withered up. The
kind of freedom which Ellen Key advocates is not a freedom to dispense
with law and order, but rather a freedom to recognize and follow true
law; it is the freedom which in morals as well as in politics is
essential for the development of real responsibility.
People talk, Ellen Key remarks, as though reform in sexual morality
meant the breaking up of a beautiful idyll, while the idyll is
impossible as long as the only alternative offered to so many young men
and women at the threshold of life is between becoming "the slave of
duty or the slave of lust." In these matters we already possess licence,
and the only sound reform lies in a kind of "freedom" which will correct
that licence by obedience to the most fundamental natural instincts
acting in harmony with the claims of the race, which claims, it must be
added, cannot be out of harmony with the best traditions of the race.
Ellen Key would agree with a great German, Wilhelm von Humboldt, who
wrote more than a century ago that "a solicitude for the race conducts
to the same results as the highest solicitude for the most beautiful
development of the inner man." The modern revolt against fossilized laws
is inevitable; it is already in progress, and we have to see to it that
the laws written upon tables of stone in their inevitable decay only
give place to the mightier laws written upon tables of flesh and blood.
Life is far too rich and manifold, Ellen Key says again, to be confined
in a single formula, even the best; if our ideal has its worth for
ourselves, if we are prepared to live for it and to die for it, that is
enough; we are not entitled to impose it on others. The conception of
duty still remains, duty to love and duty to the race. "I believe in a
new ethics," Ellen Key declares at the end of _The Women's Movement_,
"which will be a synthesis growing out of the nature of man and the
nature of woman, out of the demands of the individual and the demands
of society, out of the pagan and the Christian points of view, out of
the resolve to mould the future and out of piety towards the past."
No reader of Ellen Key's books can fail to be impressed by the
remarkable harmony between her sexual ethics and the conception that
underlies Sir Francis Galton's scientific eugenics. In setting forth the
latest aspects of his view of eugenics before the Sociological Society,
Galton asserted that the improvement of the race, in harmony with
scientific knowledge, would come about by a new religious movement, and
he gave reasons to show why such an expectation is not unreasonable; in
the past men have obeyed the most difficult marriage rules in response
to what they believed to be supernatural commands, and there is no
ground for supposing that the real demands of the welfare of the race,
founded on exact knowledge, will prove less effective in calling out an
inspiring religious emotion. Writing probably at the same time, Ellen
Key, in her essay entitled _Love and Ethics_, set forth precisely the
same conception, though not from the scientific but from the emotional
standpoint. From the outset she places the sexual question on a basis
which brings it into line with Galton's eugenics. The problem used to be
concerned, she remarks, with the insistence of society on a rigid
marriage form, in conflict with the demand of the individual to gratify
his desires in any manner that seemed good to him, while now it becomes
a question of harmonizing the claims of the improvement of the race with
the claims of the individual to happiness in love. She points out that
on this aspect real harmony becomes more possible. Regard for the
ennoblement of the race serves as a bridge from a chaos of conflicting
tendencies to a truer conception of love, and "love must become on a
higher plane what it was in primitive days--a religion." She compares
the growth of the conception of the vital value of love to the modern
growth of the conception of the value of health as against the medieval
indifference to hygiene. It is inevitable that Ellen Key, approaching
the question from the emotional side, should lay less stress than Galton
on the importance of scientific investigation in heredity, and insist
mainly on the value of sound instincts, unfettered by false and
artificial constraints, and taught to realize that the physical and the
psychic aspects of life are alike "divine."
It would obviously be premature to express either approval or
disapproval of the conceptions of sexual morality which Ellen Key has
developed with such fervour and insight. It scarcely seems probable that
the methods of sexual union, put forward as an alternative to celibacy
by some of the adherents of the new movement, are likely to become
widely popular, even if legalized in an increasing number of countries.
I have elsewhere given reasons to believe that the path of progress lies
mainly in the direction of a reform of the present institution of
marriage.[67] The need of such reform is pressing, and there are many
signs that it is being recognized. We can scarcely doubt that the
advocates of these alternative methods of sexual union will do good by
stimulating the champions of marriage to increased activity in the
reform of that institution. In such matters a certain amount of
competition sometimes has a remarkably vivifying effect.
We may be sure that women, whose interests are so much at stake in this
matter, and who tend to look at it in a practical rather than in a legal
and theological spirit, will exert a powerful influence when they have
acquired the ability to enforce that influence by the vote. This is
significantly indicated by an inquiry held in England during 1910 by the
Women's Co-operative Guild. A number of women who had held official
positions in the Guild were asked (among other questions) whether or not
they were in favour of divorce by mutual consent. Of 94 representative
women conversant with affairs who were thus consulted, as many as 82
deliberately recorded their opinion in favour of divorce by mutual
consent, and only 12 were against that highly important marriage reform.
It is probably unnecessary to discuss the opinions of other leaders in
this movement, though there are several, such as Frau Grete Meisel-Hess,
whose views deserve study. It will be sufficiently clear in what way
this Teutonic movement differs from that Anglo-Saxon woman's rights'
movement with which we have long been familiar. These German women fully
recognize that women are entitled to the same human rights as men, and
that until such rights are attained "feminism" still has a proper task
to achieve. But women must use their strength in the sphere for which
their own nature fits them. Even though millions of women are enabled to
do the work which men could do better the gain for mankind is nil. To
put women to do men's work is (Ellen Key has declared) as foolish as to
set a Beethoven or a Wagner to do engine-driving.
It has probably excited surprise in the minds of some who have been
impressed by the magnitude and vitality of this movement that it should
have manifested itself in Germany rather than in England, which is the
original home of movements for women's emancipation, or in America,
where they have reached their fullest developments. This, however,
ceases to be surprising when we realize the special qualities of the
Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic temperaments and the special conditions under
which the two movements arose. The Anglo-Saxon movement was a special
application to women of the general French movement for the logical
assertion of abstract human rights. That special application was not
ardently taken up in France itself, though first proclaimed by French
pioneers,[68] partly perhaps because such one-sided applications make
little appeal to the French mind, and mainly, no doubt, because women
throughout the eighteenth century enjoyed such high social
consideration and exerted so much influence that they were not impelled
to rise in any rebellious protest. But when the seed was brought over to
England, especially in the representative form of Mary Wollstonecraft's
_Vindication of the Rights of Women_, it fell in virgin soil which
proved highly favourable to its development. This special application
escaped the general condemnation which the Revolution had brought upon
French ideas. Women in England were beginning to awaken to ideas,--as
women in Germany are now,--and the more energetic and intelligent among
them eagerly seized upon conceptions which furnished food for their
activities. In large measure they have achieved their aims, and even
woman's suffrage has been secured here and there, without producing any
notable revolution in human affairs. The Anglo-Saxon conception of
feminine progress--beneficial as it has undoubtedly been in many
respects--makes little impression in Germany, partly because it fails to
appeal to the emotional Teutonic temperament, and partly because the
established type of German life and civilization offers very small scope
for its development. When Miss Susan Anthony, the veteran pioneer of
woman's movements in the United States, was presented to the German
Empress she expressed a hope that the Emperor would soon confer the
suffrage on German women; it is recorded that the Empress smiled, and
probably most German women smiled with her. At the present time,
however, there is an extraordinary amount of intellectual activity in
Germany, a widespread and massive activity. For the first time,
moreover, it has reached women, who are taking it up with characteristic
Teutonic thoroughness. But they are not imitating the methods of their
Anglo-Saxon sisters; they are going to work their own way. They are
spending very little energy in waving the red flag before the fortresses
of male monopoly. They are following an emotional influence which,
strangely enough, it may seem to some, finds more support from the
biological and medical side than the Anglo-Saxon movement has always
been able to win. From the time of Aristophanes downwards, whenever they
have demonstrated before the masculine citadels, women have always been
roughly bidden to go home. And now, here in Germany, where of all
countries that advice has been most freely and persistently given, women
are adopting new tactics: they have gone home. "Yes, it is true," they
say in effect, "the home is our sphere. Love and marriage, the bearing
and the training of children--that is our world. And we intend to lay
down the laws of our world."
FOOTNOTES:
[52] In 1787 Condorcet declared (_Lettres d'un Bourgeois de New Haven_,
Lettre II) that women ought to have absolutely the same rights as men,
and he repeated the same statement emphatically in 1790, in an article
"Sur l'Admission des Femmes au Droit de Cité," published in the _Journal
de la Société de 1789_. It must be added that Condorcet was not a
democrat, and neither to men nor to women would he grant the vote unless
they were proprietors.
[53] Léopold Lacour has given a full and reliable account of Olympe de
Gouges (who was born at Montauban in 1755) in his _Trois Femmes de la
Révolution_, 1900.
[54] It is noteworthy that the Empire had even a depressing effect on the
physical activities of women. The eighteenth-century woman in France,
although she was not athletic in the modern sense, enjoyed a free life
in the open air and was fond of physical exercises. During the
Directoire this tendency became very pronounced; women wore the
scantiest of garments, were out of doors in all weathers, cultivated
healthy appetites, and enjoyed the best of health. But with the
establishment of the Empire these wholesome fashions were discarded, and
women cultivated new ideals of fragile refinement indoors. (This
evolution has been traced by Dr. Lucien Nars, _L'Hygiène_, September,
1911.)
[55] Concerning the rise and progress of this movement in England much
information is sympathetically and vivaciously set forth in W. Lyon
Blease's _Emancipation of English Women_ (1910), a book, however, which
makes no claim to be judicial or impartial; the author regards
"unregulated male egoism" as the source of the difficulties in the way
of women's suffrage.
[56] Thus, in 1911 the National League for Opposing Women's Suffrage took
an impartial poll of the women voters on the municipal register in
several large constituencies, by sending a reply-paid postcard to ask
whether or not they favoured the extension to women of the Parliamentary
franchise. Only 5579 were in favour of it; 18,850 were against; 12,621
did not take the trouble to answer, and it was claimed, probably with
reason, that a majority of these were not in favour of the vote.
[57] It must not be too hastily assumed. Unless we go back to ancient
plots of the Guy Fawkes type (now only imitated by self-styled
anarchists), the leaders of movements of political reform have rarely,
if ever, organized outbursts of violence; such violence, when it
occurred, has been the spontaneous and unpremeditated act of a mob.
[58] _Revue de l'Ecole d'Anthropologie_, February, 1909, p. 50.
[59] O. Schrader, _Reallexicon_, Art. "Keuschheit." He considers that
Tacitus merely shows that German women were usually chaste after
marriage. A few centuries later, Lea points out, Salvianus, while
praising the barbarians generally for their chastity, makes an exception
in the case of the Alemanni. (See also Havelock Ellis, _Studies in the
Psychology of Sex_, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society," pp. 382-4.)
[60] Thus Kaan, anticipating Krafft-Ebing, published a _Psychopathia
Sexualis_, in 1844, and Casper, in 1852, was the first medical authority
to point out that sexual inversion is sometimes due to a congenital
psychic condition.
[61] Both Forel's and Bloch's books have become well known through
translations in England and America. Dr. Bloch is also the author of an
extremely erudite and thorough history of syphilis, which has gone far
to demonstrate that this disease was introduced into Europe from America
on the first discovery of the New World at the end of the fifteenth
century.
[62] This attitude is plainly reflected even in many books written by
men; I may mention, for instance, Frenssen's well-known novel
_Hilligenlei_ (_Holyland_).
[63] In most countries illegitimacy is decreasing; in Germany it is
steadily increasing, alike in rural and urban districts. Illegitimate
births are, however, more numerous in the cities than in the country. Of
the constituent states of the German Empire, the illegitimate birth-rate
is lowest in Prussia, highest in Saxony and Bavaria. In Munich 27 per
cent of the births are illegitimate. (The facts are clearly brought out
in an article by Dr. Arthur Grünspan in the _Berliner Tagblatt_ for
January 6, 1911, reproduced in _Die Neue Generation_, July, 1911.) Thus,
in Prussia, while the total births between 1903 and 1908,
notwithstanding a great increase in the population, have only increased
2.6 per cent, the illegitimate births have increased as much as 11.1 per
cent. The increase is marked in nearly all the German States. It is
specially marked in Saxony; here the proportion of illegitimate births
to the total number of births was, in 1903, 12.51 per cent, and in 1908
it had already risen to 14.40 per cent. In Berlin it is most marked;
here it began in 1891, when there were nearly 47,000 legitimate births;
by 1909, however, the legitimate births had fallen to 38,000, a decrease
of 19.4 per cent. But illegitimate births rose during the same period
from nearly 7000 to over 9000, an increase of 35 per cent. The
proportion of illegitimate births to the total births is now over 20 per
cent, so that to every four legitimate children there is rather more
than one illegitimate child. It may be said that this is merely due to
an increasing proportion of unmarried women. That, however, is not the
case. The marriage-rate is on the whole rising, and the average age of
women at marriage is becoming lower rather than higher. Grünspan
considers that this increase in illegitimacy is likely to continue, and
he is inclined to attribute it less to economic than to
social-psychological causes.
[64] I have discussed this point in _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_,
Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society," chap. XII.
[65] It is remarkable that in early times in Spain the laws recognized
concubinage (_barragania_) as almost equal to marriage, and as
conferring equal rights on the child, even on the sons of the clergy,
who could thus inherit from their fathers by right of the privileges
accorded to the concubine or _barragana_. _Barragania_, however, was not
real marriage, and in many regions it could be contracted by married men
(R. Altamira, _Historia de España y de la Civilazacion Española_, Vol.
I, pp. 644 et seq.).
[66] "La femme libre," in quest of whom the young Saint-Simonians
preached a crusade, must be a woman of reflection and intellect who,
having meditated on the fate of her "sisters," knowing the wants of
women, and having sounded those feminine capacities which man has never
completely penetrated, shall give forth the confession of her sex,
without restriction or reserve, in such a manner as to furnish the
indispensable elements for formulating the rights and duties of woman.
Saint Simon had asked Madame de Staël to undertake this rôle, but she
failed to respond. When George Sand published her first novels, one
Guéroult was commissioned to ascertain if the author of _Lélia_ would
undertake this important service. He found a badly dressed woman who was
using her talents to gain a living, but was by no means anxious to
become the high priestess of a new religion. Even after his
disappointment Enfantin looked eagerly forward to the publication of
George Sand's _Histoire de ma Vie_, hoping that at last the great
revelation was coming, and he was again disillusioned. But before this
Emile Barrault had arisen and declared that in the East, in the solitude
of the harem, "la femme libre" would be found in the person of some
odalisque. The "mission of the mother" was formed, and with Barrault at
the head it set out for Constantinople. All were dressed in white as an
indication of the vow of chastity they had taken before leaving Paris,
and on the road they begged in the name of the Mother. They arrived at
Constantinople and preached the faith of Saint-Simon to the Turks in
French. But "la femme libre" seemed as far off as ever, and they
resolved to go to Rotourma in Oceana, there to establish the religion of
Saint-Simon and a perfect Government which might serve as a model to the
States of Europe. First, however, they felt it a duty to make certain
that the Mother was not hiding somewhere in Russia, and they went
therefore to Odessa, but the Governor, who was wanting in sympathy,
speedily turned them out, and having realized that Rotourma was some
distance off, the mission broke up, most of the members going to Egypt
to rejoin Enfantin, whom the Arabs, struck by his beauty, had called
_Abu-l-dhunieh_, the Father of the World. (This account of the movement
is based on that given by Maxime du Camp, in his _Souvenirs
Littéraires_)
[67] _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to
Society," chap. X.
[68] It is worth noting that a Frenchwoman has been called "the mother of
modern feminism." Marie de Gournay, who died in 1645 at the age of
eighty, is best known as the adopted daughter of Montaigne, for whom she
cherished an enthusiastic reverence, becoming the first editor of his
essays. Her short essay, _Egalité des Hommes et des Femmes_, was written
in 1622. See e.g. M. Schiff, _La Fille d'Alliance de Montaigne_.
IV
THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN IN RELATION TO ROMANTIC LOVE
The Absence of Romantic Love in Classic Civilization--Marriage as a
Duty--The Rise of Romantic Love in the Roman Empire--The Influence
of Christianity--The Attitude of Chivalry--The Troubadours--The
Courts of Love--The Influence of the Renaissance--Conventional
Chivalry and Modern Civilization--The Woman Movement--The Modern
Woman's Equality of Rights and Responsibilities excludes
Chivalry--New Forms of Romantic Love still remain possible--Love as
the Inspiration of Social Hygiene.
What will be the ultimate effect of the woman's movement, now slowly but
surely taking place among us, upon romantic love? That is really a
serious question, and it is much more complex than many of those who are
prepared to answer it off-hand may be willing to admit.
It must be remembered that romantic love has not been a constant
accompaniment of human relationships, even in civilization. It is true
that various peoples very low down in the scale possess romantic
love-songs, often, it appears, written by the women. But the classic
civilizations of Greece and Rome in their most robust and brilliant
periods knew little or nothing of romantic love in connection with
normal sexual relationships culminating in marriage. Classic antiquity
reveals a high degree of conjugal devotion, and of domestic affection,
at all events in Rome, but the right of the woman to follow the
inspirations of her own heart, and the idealization and worship of the
woman by the man, were not only scarcely known but, so far as they were
known, reprehended or condemned. Ovid, in the opinion of some,
represents a new movement in Rome. We are apt to regard Ovid as, in
erotic matters, the representative of a set of immoral Roman
voluptuaries. That view probably requires considerable modification.
Ovid was not indeed a champion of morality, but there is no good reason
to suppose that, before he appeared, the rather stern Roman mind had yet
conceived those refinements and courtesies which he set forth in such
charming detail. If we take a wide survey of his work, we may perhaps
regard Ovid as the pioneer of a chivalrous attitude towards women and of
a romantic conception of love not only new in Rome but of significance
for Europe generally. Ovid was a powerful factor in the Renaissance
movement, and not least in England, where his influence on Shakespeare
and some others of the Elizabethans cannot easily be overrated.[69]
For the ordinary classic mind, Greek or Roman, marriage was intended for
the end of building up the family, and the family was consecrated to the
State. The fulfilment of so exalted a function involved a certain
austere dignity which excluded wayward inclination or passionate
emotion. These might indeed occur between a man and a woman outside
marriage, but putting aside the very limited phenomena of Athenian
hetairism, they were too shameful to be idealized. Some trace of this
classic attitude may be said to persist even to-day among the so-called
Latin nations, notably in the French tradition (now dying out) of
treating marriage as a relationship to be arranged, not by the two
parties themselves, but by their parents and guardians; Montaigne,
attached as he was to maxims of Roman antiquity, was not very alien from
the ordinary French attitude of his time when he declared that, since we
do not marry so much for our own sakes as for the sake of posterity and
the race, marriage is too sacred a process to be mixed with amorous
extravagance.[70] There is something to be said for that point of view
which is nowadays too often forgotten, but it certainly fails to cover
the whole of the ground.
It is not only in the West that a contemptuous attitude towards the
romantic and erotic side of life has prevailed at some of the most
vigorous moments of civilization. It is also found in the East. In
Japan, for instance, even at the present day, romantic love, as a
reputable element of ordinary life, is unknown or disapproved; its
existence is not recognized in the schools, and the European novels that
celebrate it are scarcely understood.[71]
The development of modern romantic love in connection with marriage
seems to be found in the late Greek world under the Roman Empire.[72]
That is commonly called a period of decadence. In a certain limited
sense it was. Greece had become subjugated to Rome. Rome herself had
lost her military spirit and was losing her political power. But the
fighting instinct, and even the ruling spirit, are not synonymous with
civilization. The "decline and fall" of empires by no means necessarily
involves the decay of civilization. It is now generally realized that
the later Roman Empire was not, as was once thought, an age of social
and moral degeneration.[73] The State indeed was dissolving, but the
individual was evolving. The age which produced a Plutarch--for fifteen
hundred years one of the great inspiring forces of the world--was the
reverse of a corrupt age. The life of the home and the life of the soul
were alike developing. The home was becoming more complex, more
intimate, more elevated. The soul was being turned in on itself to
discover new and joyous secrets: the secret of the love of Nature, the
secret of mystic religion, and, not least, the secret of romantic love.
When Christianity finally conquered the Roman world its task very
largely lay in taking over and developing those three secrets already
discovered by Paganism.
It was inevitable, however, that in developing these new forms of the
emotional life, the ascetic bent of Christianity should make itself
felt. It was not possible for Christianity to cast its halo around the
natural sexual life, but it was possible to refine and exalt that life,
to lift it into a spiritual sphere. Neither woman the sweetheart nor
woman the mother were in ordinary life glorified by the Church; they
were only tolerated. But on a higher than natural plane they were
surrounded by a halo and raised to the highest pedestal of reverence and
even worship. The Virgin was exalted, Bride and Bridegroom became terms
of mystical import, and the Holy Mother received the adoring love of all
Christendom. Even in the actual relations of men and women, quite early
in the history of Christianity, we sometimes find men and women
cultivating relationships which excluded that earthly union the Church
looked down on, but yet involved the most tender and intimate physical
affection. Many charming stories of such relationships are found in the
lives of the saints, and sometimes they existed even within the
marriage bond.[74] Christianity led to the use of ideas and terms
borrowed from earthly love in a different and symbolic sense. But the
undesigned result was that a new force and beauty were added to those
ideas and terms, however applied, and also that many emotions were thus
cultivated which became capable of re-inforcing earthly human love. In
this way it happened that, though Christianity rejected the ideal of
romantic love in its natural associations, it indirectly prepared the
way for a loftier and deeper realization of that love.
There can be no doubt that the emotional training and refining of the
fleshly instincts by Christianity was the chief cause of the rise of
that conception of romantic love which we associate with the institution
of chivalry. Exalted and sanctified by contact with the central dogmas
of religion, the emotion of love was brought down from this spiritual
atmosphere by the knightly lover, with something of its ethereal halo
still clinging to it, and directed towards an earthly mistress. The most
extravagant phase of romantic love which has ever been seen was then
brought about, and in many cases, certainly, it was a real erotomania
which passed beyond the bounds of sanity.[75] In its extreme forms,
however, this romantic love was a rare, localized, and short-lived
manifestation. The dominant attitude of the chivalrous age towards
women, as Léon Gautier has shown in his monumental work on chivalry, was
one of indifference, or even contempt. The knight's thoughts were more
of war than of women, and he cherished his horse more than his
mistress.[76]
But women, above all in France, reacted against this attitude, and with
splendid success. Their husbands treated them with indifference or left
them at home while they sought adventure in the world. The neglected
wives proceeded to lay down the laws of society, and took upon
themselves the part of rulers in the domain of morals. In the eleventh,
the twelfth, the thirteenth centuries, says Méray in a charming book on
life in the days of the Courts of Love, we find women "with infinite
skill and an adorable refinement seizing the moral direction of French
society." They did so, he remarks, in a spirit so Utopian, so ideally
poetic, that historians have hesitated to take them seriously. The laws
of the Courts of Love[77] may sometimes seem to us immoral and
licentious, but in reality they served to restrain the worst
immoralities and licences of the time. They banished violence, they
allowed no venality, and they inculcated moderation in passion. The task
of the Courts of Love was facilitated by the relative degree of peace
which then reigned, especially by the fact that the Normans, holding
both coasts of the Channel, formed a link between France and England.
When the murderous activities of French kings and English kings
destroyed that link, the Courts of Love were swept away in the general
disorder and the progress of civilization indefinitely retarded.[78] Yet
in some degree the ideals which had been thus embodied still persisted.
As the Goncourts pointed out in their invaluable book, _La Femme au
Dix-huitième Siècle_ (Chap. v), from the days of chivalry even on into
the eighteenth century, when on the surface at all events it apparently
disappeared, an exalted ideal of love continued to be cherished in
France. This conception remained associated, throughout, with the great
social influence and authority which had been enjoyed by women in France
even from medieval times. That influence had become pronounced during
the seventeenth century, and at that time Sir Thomas Smith in his
_Commonwealth of England_, writing of the high position of women in
England, remarked that they possessed "almost as much liberty as in
France."
There were at least two forms of medieval romantic love. The first arose
in Provence and northern Italy during the twelfth century, and spread to
Germany as _Minnedienst_. In this form the young knights directed their
respectful and adoring devotion to a high-born married woman who chose
one of them as her own cavalier, to do her service and reverence, the
two vowing devotion to each other until death. It was a part of this
amorous code that there could not be love between husband and wife, and
it was counted a mark of low breeding for a husband to challenge his
wife's right to her young knight's services, though sometimes we are
told the husband risked this reproach, occasionally with tragic results.
This mode of love, after being eloquently sung and practised by the
troubadours--usually, it appears, younger sons of noble houses--died out
in the place of its origin, but it had been introduced into Spain, and
the Spaniards reintroduced it into Italy when they acquired the kingdom
of Naples; in Italy it was conventionalized into the firmly rooted
institution of the _cavaliere servente_. From the standpoint of a strict
morality, the institution was obviously open to question. But we can
scarcely fail to see that at its origin it possessed, even if
unconsciously, a quasi-religious warrant in the worship of the Holy
Mother, and we have to recognize that, notwithstanding its questionable
shape, it was really an effort to attain a purer and more ideal
relationship than was possible in a rough and warlike age which placed
the wife in subordination to her husband. A tender devotion that
inspired poetry, an unalloyed respect that approached reverence, vows
that were based on equal freedom and independence on both sides--these
were possibilities which the men and women of that age felt to be
incompatible with marriage as they knew it.
The second form of medieval romantic love was more ethereal than the
first, and much more definitely and consciously based on a religious
attitude. It was really the worship of the Virgin transferred to a
young earthly maiden, yet retaining the purity and ideality of
religious worship. To so high a degree is this the case that it is
sometimes difficult to be sure whether we are concerned with a real
maiden of flesh and blood or only a poetic symbol of womanhood. This
doubt has been raised, notably by Bartoli, concerning Dante's Beatrice,
the supreme type of this ethereal love, which arose in the thirteenth
century, and was chiefly cultivated in Florence. The poets of this
movement were themselves aware of the religious character of their
devotion to the _donna angelicata_ to whom they even apply, as they
would to the Queen of Heaven, the appellation Stella Maris. That there
was an element of flesh and blood in these figures is believed by Remy
de Gourmont, but when we gaze at them, he remarks, we see at first, "in
place of a body only two eyes with angel's wings behind them, on the
background of an azure sky sown with golden stars"; the lover is on his
knees and his love has become a prayer.[79] This phase of romantic love
was brief, and perhaps mostly the possession of the poets, but it
represented a really important moment in the evolution of modern
romantic love. It was a step towards the realization of the genuinely
human charm of young womanhood in real human relationships, of which we
already have a foretaste in the delicious early French story of Aucassin
and Nicolette.
The re-discovery of classic literature, the movements of Humanism and
the Renaissance, swept away what was left of the almost religious
idealization of the young virgin. The ethereal maiden, thin, pale,
anæmic, disappeared alike from literature and from art, and was no
longer an ideal in actual life. She gave place to a new woman, conscious
of her own fully developed womanhood and all its needs, radiantly
beautiful and finely shaped in every limb. She lacked the spirituality
of her predecessors, but she had gained in intellect. She appears first
in the pages of Boccaccio. After a long interval Titian immortalized her
rich and mature beauty; she is Flora, she is Ariadne, she is alike the
Earthly Love and the Heavenly Love. Every curve of her body was
adoringly and minutely described by Niphus and Firenzuola.[80] She was,
moreover, the courtesan whose imperial charm and adroitness enabled her
to trample under foot the medieval conception of lust as sin, even in
the courts of popes. At the great academic centre of Bologna, finally,
she chastely taught learning and science.[81] The people of the Italian
Renaissance placed women on the same level as men, and to call a woman a
_virago_ implied unalloyed praise.[82]
The very mixed conditions of what we have been accustomed to consider
the modern world then began for women. They were no longer
cloistered--whether in convents or the home--but neither were they any
longer worshipped. They began to be treated as human beings, and when
men idealized them in figures of romantic charm or pathos--figures like
Shakespeare's Rosalind or Marivaux's Sylvia or Richardson's
Clarissa--this humanity was henceforth the common ground out of which
the vision arose. But, one notes, in nearly all the great poets and
novelists up to the middle of the last century, it was usually in the
weakness of humanity that the artist sought the charm and pathos of his
feminine figures. From Shakespeare's Ophelia to Thackeray's Amelia this
is the rule, more emphatically expressed in the literature of England
than of any other country. There had been no actual emancipation of
women; though now they had entered the world of men, they were not yet,
socially and legally, of that world. Even the medieval traditions still
lived on in subtly conventionalized forms. The "chivalrous" attitude
towards women was, as the word itself suggests, a medieval survival. It
belonged to a period of barbarism when brutal force ruled and when the
man who magnanimously placed his force at the disposition of a woman was
really doing her a service and granting her a privilege. But
civilization means the building up of an orderly society in which
individual rights are respected, and force no longer dominates. So that
as civilization advances the occasions on which women require the aid
of masculine force become ever fewer and more unimportant. The
conventionalized chivalry of men then tends to become an offer of
services which it would be better for women to do for themselves and a
bestowal of privileges to which they are nowise entitled.[83] Moreover,
this same chivalry is, under these conditions, apt to take on a
character which is the reverse of its face value. It becomes the
assertion of a power over women instead of a power on their behalf; and
it carries with it a tinge of contempt in place of respect.
Theoretically, a thousand chivalrous swords should leap from their
scabbards to succour the distressed woman. In practice this may only
mean that the thousand owners of these metaphorical weapons are on the
alert to take advantage of the distressed woman.
Thus the romantic emotions based on medieval ideals gradually lost their
worth. They were not in relation to the altered facts of life; they had
become an empty convention which could be turned to very unromantic
uses. The movement for the emancipation of women was not consciously or
directly a movement of revolt against an antiquated chivalry. It was
rather a part of the development of civilization which rendered chivalry
antique. Medieval romantic love implied in women a weakness in the soil
of which only a spiritual force could flourish. The betterment of social
conditions, the subordination of violence to order, the growing respect
for individual rights, took away the reasons for consecrating weakness
in women, and created an ever larger field in which women could freely
seek to rival men, because it is a field in which knowledge and skill
are of far more importance than muscular strength. The emancipation of
women has simply been the later and more conscious phase of the process
by which women have entered into this field and sought their share of
its rights and its responsibilities.
The woman movement of modern times, properly understood, has thus been
the effort of women to adapt themselves to the conditions of an orderly
and peaceful civilization. Education, under the changed conditions, can
effect what before needed force of arms; responsibility is now demanded
where before only tutelage was possible. A civilized society in which
women are ignorant and irresponsible is an anachronism, and, however
great the wrench with the past might be, it was necessary that women
should be adjusted to the changing times. The ideal of the weak,
ignorant, inexperienced woman--the cross between an angel and an idiot,
as I have elsewhere described her[84]--no longer fulfilled any useful
purpose. Civilized society furnishes the conditions under which all
adult persons are socially equal and all are free to give to society the
best they are capable of.
It was inevitable, but unfortunate, that this movement should have
sometimes tended to take the form of an attempt on the part of women to
secure, not merely equality with men, but actual imitation of men. These
women said that since men had attained mastery in life, captured all the
best things, and adopted the most successful methods of living, it was
necessary for women to copy them at every point. That was a specious
plea which even had in it a certain element of truth. But the fact
remained that women and men are different, that the difference is based
in fundamental natural functions, and that to place one sex in exactly
the same position as the other sex is to deform its outlines and to
hamper its activities.
From the present point of view we are only concerned with the influence
of the woman's movement on love. On the traditional conception of
romantic love inherited from medieval days there can be no doubt that
this influence has been highly dissolvent. Medieval romantic love, in
its original form, had been part of a conception of womanhood made up of
opposites, and all the opposites balanced each other. The medieval man
laid his homage at the feet of the great lady in the castle hall, but he
himself lorded it over the wife who drudged in his own home. On his
knees he gazed up in devotion at the ethereal virgin, but when she
ceased to be a virgin, he asserted himself by cursing her as a demon
sent from hell to seduce and torment him. All this was possible because
the woman was outside the orbit of the man's life, never on the same
plane, necessarily higher or lower. It became difficult if woman was
man's equal, absurdly impossible if she was of identical nature with
him.
The medieval romantic tradition has come down to us so laden with beauty
and mystery that we are apt to think, as we see it melt away, that human
achievements are being permanently depreciated. That illusion occurs in
every age of transition. It was notably so in the eighteenth century,
which represented a highly important stage in the emancipation of women.
To some that century seems to have been given up to empty gallantry and
facile pleasure. Yet it was not only the age in which women for the
first time succeeded in openly attaining their supreme social
influence,[85] it was an age of romantic love, and the noble or poignant
love-stories which have reached us from the records of that period
surpass those of any other age.
If we believe with Goethe that the religion of the future consists in a
triple reverence--the reverence for what is above us, the reverence for
what is below us, and the reverence for our equals[86]--we need not
grieve overmuch if one form of this reverence, the first, and that which
Goethe regarded as the earliest and crudest, has lost its exclusive
claim. Reverence is essential to all romantic love. To bring down the
Madonna and the Virgin from their pedestals to share with men the common
responsibilities and duties of life is not to divest them of the claim
to reverence. It is merely the sign of a change in the form of that
reverence, a change which heralds a new romantic love.
It would be premature to attempt to define the exact outline of the new
forms of romantic love, or the precise lineaments of the beings who will
most ardently evoke that love. In literature, indeed, the ideals of life
cast their shadow before, and we may surely trace a change in the erotic
ideals mirrored in literature. The woman whom Dickens idealized in
_David Copperfield_ is unlike indeed to the series of women of a new
type introduced by George Meredith, and the modern heroine generally
exhibits more of the robust, open-eyed and spontaneous qualities of that
later type than the blind and clinging nature of the amiable simpletons
of the older type. That the changed conditions of civilization should
produce new types of womanhood and of love is not surprising, if we
realize that, even within the ancient chivalrous forms it was possible
to produce similar robust types when the qualities of a race were
favourable to them. Spain furnishes a notable illustration. Spanish
literature from Cervantes and Tirso to Valera and Blasco Ibañez reflects
a type of woman who stands on the same ground as man and is his equal
and often his superior on that ground, alike in vigour of body and of
spirit, acquiring all that she cares to of virility, while losing
nothing feminine that is of worth.[87] In more than one respect the
ideal woman of Spain is the ideal woman our civilization now renders
necessary. The women of the future, Grete Meisel-Hess declares in her
femininely clever and frank discussion of present-day conditions, _Die
Sexuelle Krise_, will be full, strong, elementary natures, devoid alike
of the impulse to destroy or the aptitude to be destroyed. She
considers, moreover, that so far from romantic love being a thing of the
past, "love as a form of worship is reserved for the future."[88] In the
past it has only been found among a few rare souls; in the future world,
fostered by the finer selection of a conscious eugenics, and a new
reverence and care for motherhood, we may reasonably hope for a truly
efficient humanity, the bearers and conservers of the highest human
emotions. It is in this sense, indeed, that the voices of the greatest
and most typical leaders of the woman's movement of emancipation to-day
are heard. Ellen Key, in her _Love and Marriage_, seeks to conciliate
the cultivation of a free and sacred sexual relationship with the
worship of the child, as the embodiment of the future race, while Olive
Schreiner proclaims in her _Woman and Labour_ that the woman of the
future will walk side by side with man in a higher and deeper
relationship than has ever been possible before because it will involve
a new community in activity and insight.
Nor is it alone from the feminine side that these forecasts are made.
Certainly for the most part love has been cultivated more by women than
by men. Primacy in the genius of intellect belongs incontestably to men,
but in the genius of love it has doubtless oftener been achieved by
women. They have usually understood better than men that in this matter,
as Goethe insisted, it is the lover and not the beloved who reaps the
chief fruits of love. "It is better to love, even violently," wrote the
forsaken Portuguese nun, in her immortal _Letters_, "than merely to be
loved." He who loses his life here saves it, for it is only in so far as
he becomes a crucified god that Love wins the sacrifice of human hearts.
Of late years, by an inevitable reaction, women have sometimes forgotten
this eternal verity. The women of the twentieth century in their anxiety
for self-possession and their rightful eagerness to gain positions they
feel they have been too long excluded from, have perhaps yet failed to
realize that the women of the eighteenth century, who exerted a sway
over life that the women of no age before or since have possessed, were,
above all women, great and heroic lovers, and that those two fundamental
facts cannot be cut asunder. But this failure, temporary as it is
doubtless destined to be, will work for good if it is the point of
departure for a revival among men of the art of love.
Men indeed have here fallen behind women. The old saying, so tediously
often quoted, concerning love as a "thing apart" in the lives of men
would scarcely have occurred to a medieval poet of Provence or Florence.
It is not enough for women to proclaim a new avatar of love if men are
not ready and eager to learn its art and to practise its discipline. In
a profoundly suggestive fragment on love, left incomplete at his death
by the distinguished sociologist Tarde,[89] he suggests that when
masculine energy dies down in the fields of political ambition and
commercial gain, as it already has in the field of warfare, the energy
liberated by greater social organization and cohesion may find scope
once more in love. For too long a period love, like war and politics and
commerce, has been chiefly monopolized by the predatory type of man, in
this field symbolized by the figure of Don Juan. In the future, Tarde
suggests, the Don Juan type of lover may fall into disrepute, giving
place to the Virgilian type, for whom love is not a thing apart but a
form of life embodying its best and highest activities.
When we come upon utterances of this kind we are tempted to think that
they represent merely the poetic dreams of individuals, standing too far
ahead of their fellows to possess any significance for men and women in
general. But it is probable that Ovid, and certain that Dante, set forth
erotic conceptions that were unintelligible to most of their
contemporaries, yet they have been immensely influential over the ideas
and emotions of men in later ages. The poets and prophets of one
generation are engaged in moulding ideals which will be realized in the
lives of a subsequent generation; in expressing their own most intimate
emotions, as it has been truly said, they become the leaders in a long
file of men and women. Whatever may yet be uncertain and undefined, we
may assuredly believe that the emotion of love is far too deeply rooted
in the depth of man's organism and woman's organism ever to be torn out
or ever to be thrust into a subordinate place. And we may also believe
that there is no measurable limit to its power of putting forth ever new
and miraculous flowers. It is recorded that once, in James Hinton's
presence, the conversation turned on music, and it was suggested that,
owing to the limited number of musical combinations and the unlimited
number of musical compositions, a time would come when all music would
only be a repetition of exhausted harmonies. Hinton remarked that then
would come a man so inspired by a new spirit that his feeling would be,
not that _all_ music has been written, but that no _music_ has yet been
written. It was a memorable saying. In every field that is the perpetual
proclamation of genius: Behold! I create all things new. And in this
field of love we can conceive of no age in which to the inspired seer it
will not be possible to feel: There has yet been no _love_!
FOOTNOTES:
[69] See especially Sidney Lee, "Ovid and Shakespeare's Sonnets,"
_Quarterly Review_, April, 1909.
[70] Montaigne, _Essais_, Book III, chap. V.
[71] See e.g. Mrs. Fraser, _World's Work and Play_, December, 1906.
[72] A more modern feeling for love and marriage begins to emerge,
however, at a much earlier period, with Menander and the New Comedy.
E.F.M. Benecke, in his interesting little book on _Antimachus of
Colophon and the Position of Women in Greek Poetry_, believes that the
romantic idea (that is to say, the idea that a woman is a worthy object
for a man's love, and that such love may well be the chief, if not the
only, aim of a man's life) had originally been propounded by Antimachus
at the end of the fifth century B.C. Antimachus, said to have been the
friend of Plato, had been united to a woman of Lydia (where women, we
know, occupied a very high position) and her death inspired him to write
a long poem, _Lyde_, "the first love poem ever addressed by a Greek to
his wife after death." Only a few lines of this poem survive. But
Antimachus seems to have greatly influenced Philetas (whom Croiset calls
"the first of the Alexandrians") and Asclepiades of Samos, tender and
exquisite poets whom also we only know by a few fragments. Benecke's
arguments, therefore, however probable, cannot be satisfactorily
substantiated.
[73] As I have elsewhere pointed out (_Studies in the Psychology of Sex_,
Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society," chap. IX), most modern
authorities--Friedländer, Dill, Donaldson, etc.--consider that there was
no real moral decline in the later Roman Empire; we must not accept the
pictures presented by satirists, pagan or Christian, as of general
application.
[74] I have discussed this phase of early Christianity in the sixth
volume of _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, "Sex in Relation to
Society," chap. V.
[75] Ulrich von Lichtenstein, in the thirteenth century, is the typical
example of this chivalrous erotomania. His account of his own adventures
has been questioned, but Reinhold Becker (_Wahrheit und Dichtung in
Ulrich von Lichtenstein's Frauendienst_, 1888) considers that, though
much exaggerated, it is in substance true.
[76] Léon Gautier, _La Chevalerie_, pp. 236-8, 348-50.
[77] The chief source of information on these Courts is André le
Chapelain's _De Arte Amatoria_. Boccaccio made use of this work, though
without mentioning the author's name, in his own _Dialogo d' Amore_.
[78] A. Méray, _La Vie au Temps des Cours d'Amour_, 1876.
[79] Remy de Gourmont, _Dante, Béatrice et la Poésie Amoureuse_, 1907, p.
32.
[80] Niphus (born about 1473), a physician and philosopher of the Papal
Court, wrote in his _De Pulchro_, sometimes considered the first modern
treatise on æsthetics, a minute description of Joan of Aragon, whose
portrait, traditionally ascribed to Raphael, is in the Louvre. The
famous work of Firenzuola (born 1493) entitled _Dialogo delle Bellezze
delle Donne_, was published in 1548. It has been translated into English
by Clara Bell under the title _On the Beauty of Women_.
[81] See, for example, Edith Coulson James, _Bologna: Its History,
Antiquities and Art_, 1911.
[82] See, for an interesting account of the position of women in the
Italian Renaissance, Burckhardt, _Die Kultur der Renaissance_, Part V,
ch. VI.
[83] I may quote the following remarks from a communication I have
received from a University man: "I am prepared to show women, and to
expect from them, precisely the same amount of consideration as I show
to or expect from other men, but I rather resent being expected to make
a preferential difference. For example, in a crowded tram I see no more
adequate reason for giving up my seat to a young and healthy girl than
for expecting her to give up hers to me; I would do so cheerfully for an
old person of either sex on the ground that I am probably better fit to
stand the fatigue of 'strap-hanging,' and because I recognize that some
respect is due to age; but if persons get into over-full vehicles they
should not expect first-comers to turn out of their seats merely because
they happen to be men." This writer acknowledges, indeed, that he is not
very sensitive to the erotic attraction of women, but it is probable
that the changing status of women will render the attitude he expresses
more and more common among men.
[84] _Ante_, p. 58.
[85] "Women then were queens," as Taine writes (_L'Ancien Régime_, Vol.
I, p. 219), and he gives references to illustrate the point.
[86] Goethe, _Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre_, Book II, ch. I.
[87] Havelock Ellis, _The Soul of Spain_, chap. III, "The Women of
Spain."
[88] Grete Meisel-Hess, _Die Sexuelle Krise_, 1909, pp. 148, 168.
[89] "La Morale Sexuelle," _Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_,
January, 1907.
V
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF A FALLING BIRTH-RATE
The Fall of the Birth-rate in Europe generally--In England--In
Germany--In the United States--In Canada--In Australasia--"Crude"
Birth-rate and "Corrected" Birth-rate--The Connection between High
Birth-rate and High Death-rate--"Natural Increase" measured by
Excess of Births over Deaths--The Measure of National
Well-being--The Example of Russia--Japan--China--The Necessity of
viewing the Question from a wide Standpoint--The Prevalence of
Neo-Malthusian Methods--Influence of the Roman Catholic
Church--Other Influences lowering the Birth-rate--Influence of
Postponement of Marriage--Relation of the Birth-rate to Commercial
and Industrial Activity--Illustrated by Russia, Hungary, and
Australia--The Relation of Prosperity to Fertility--The Social
Capillarity Theory--Divergence of the Birth-rate and the
Marriage-rate--Marriage-rate and the Movement of Prices--Prosperity
and Civilization--Fertility among Savages--The lesser Fertility of
Urban Populations--Effect of Urbanization on Physical
Development--Why Prosperity fails permanently to increase
Fertility--Prosperity creates Restraints on Fertility--The Process
of Civilization involves Decreased Fertility--In this Respect it is
a Continuation of Zoological Evolution--Large Families as a Stigma
of Degeneration--The Decreased Fertility of Civilization a General
Historical Fact--The Ideals of Civilization to-day--The East and
the West.
I
One of the most interesting phenomena of the early part of the
nineteenth century was the immense expansion of the people of the
so-called "Anglo-Saxon" race.[90] This expansion coincided with that
development of industrial and commercial activity which made the
English people, who had previously impressed foreigners as somewhat lazy
and drunken, into "a nation of shopkeepers." It also coincided with the
end of the supremacy of France in Europe; France had succeeded to Spain
as the leading power in Europe, and had on the whole maintained a
supremacy which Napoleon brought to a climax, and, in doing so, crushed.
The growing prosperity of England represented an entirely new wave of
influence, mainly economic in character, but not less forceful than that
of Spain and of France had been; and this prosperity was reflected in
the growth of the nation. The greater part of the Victorian period was
marked by this expansion of population, which reached its highest point
in the early years of the second half of that period. While the
population of England was thus increasing with ever greater rapidity at
home, at the same time the English-speaking peoples overspread the whole
of North America, and colonized the fertile fringe of Australia. It was,
on a still larger scale, a phenomenon similar to that which had occurred
three hundred years earlier, when Spain covered the world and founded an
empire upon which, as Spaniards proudly boasted, the sun never set.
When now, a century later, we survey the situation, not only has
industrial and commercial activity ceased to be a special attribute of
the Anglo-Saxons--since the Germans have here shown themselves to
possess qualities of the highest order, and other countries are rapidly
rivalling them--but within the limits of the English-speaking world
itself the English have found formidable rivals in the Americans.
Underlying, however, even these great changes there is a still more
fundamental fact to be considered, a fact which affects all branches of
the race; and that is, that the Anglo-Saxons have passed their great
epoch of expansion and that their birth-rate is rapidly falling to a
normal level, that is to say, to the average level of the world in
general. Disregarding the extremely important point of the death-rate in
its bearing on the birth-rate, England is seen to possess a medium
birth-rate among European countries, not among the countries with a high
birth-rate, like Russia, Roumania, or Bulgaria, nor among those with a
low birth-rate, like Sweden, Belgium, and France. It was in this last
country that the movement of decline in the European birth-rate began,
and though the rate of decline has in France now become very gradual the
long period through which it has extended has placed France in the
lowest place, so far as Europe is concerned. In 1908 out of a total of
over 11,000,000 French families, in nearly 2,000,000 there were no
children, and in nearly 3,000,000 there was only one child.[91] The
general decline in the European birth-rate, during the years 1901-1905,
was only slight in Switzerland, Ireland and Spain, while it was large
not only in France, but in Italy, Servia, England and Wales, and
especially in Hungary (while, outside Europe, it was largest of all in
South Australia). Since 1905 there has been a further general decline
throughout Europe, only excepting Ireland, Bulgaria, and Roumania. In
Prussia in 1881-1885 the birth-rate was 37.4; in 1909 it was only 31.8;
while in the German Empire as a whole it is throughout lower than in
Prussia, though somewhat higher than in England. In Austria and Spain
alone of European countries during the twenty years between 1881 and
1901 was there any tendency for the fertility of wives to increase. In
all other countries there was a decrease, greatest in Belgium, next
greatest in France, then in England.[92]
If we consider the question, not on the basis of the crude birth-rate,
but of the "corrected" birth-rate, with more exact reference to the
child-producing elements in the population, as is done by Newsholme and
Stevenson,[93] we find that the greatest decline has taken place in New
South Wales, then in Victoria, Belgium, and Saxony, followed by New
Zealand. But France, the German Empire generally, England, and Denmark
all show a considerable fall; while Sweden and Norway show a fall,
which, especially in Norway, is slight. Norway illustrates the
difference between the "crude" and the "corrected" birth-rate; the crude
birth-rate is lower than that of Saxony, but the corrected birth-rate is
higher. Ireland, again, has a very low crude birth-rate, but the
population of child-bearing age has a high birth-rate, considerably
higher than that of England.
Thus while forty years ago it was usual for both the English and the
Germans to contemplate, perhaps with some complacency, the spectacle of
the falling birth-rate in France as compared with the high birth-rate in
England and Germany, we are now seen to be all marching along the same
road. In 1876 the English birth-rate reached its maximum of 36.3 per
thousand; while in France the birth-rate now appears almost to have
reached its lowest level. Germany, like England, now also has a falling
birth-rate, though it will take some time to sink to the English level.
The birth-rate for Germany generally is still much higher than for
England generally, but urbanization in Germany seems to have a greater
influence than in England in lowering the birth-rate, and for many years
past the birth-rate of Berlin has been lower than that of London. The
birth-rate in Germany has long been steadily falling, and the increase
in the population of Germany is due to a concomitant steady fall in the
death-rate, a fall to which there are inevitable natural limits.[94]
Moreover, as Flux has shown,[95] urbanization is going on at a greater
speed in Germany than in England, and practically the entire natural
increase of the German population for a quarter of a century has drifted
into the towns. But the death-rate of the young in German towns is far
higher than in English towns, and the first five years of life in
Germany produce as much mortality as the first twenty-five years in
England.[96] So that a thousand children born in England add far more to
the population than a thousand children born in Germany. The average
number of children per family in German towns is less than in English
towns of the same size. These results, reached by Flux, suggest that in
a few years' time the rate of increase in the German population will be
lower than it is at present in England. In England, since 1876, the
decline has been so rapid as to be equal to 20 per cent within a
generation, and in some of the large towns to 40 per cent. Against this
there has, indeed, to be set the general tendency during recent years
for the death-rate to fall also. But this saving of life has until
lately been effected mainly at the higher ages; there has been but
little saving of the lives of infants, upon whom the death-rate falls
most heavily. Accompanying this falling off in the number of children
produced there has often been, as we might expect, a fall in the
marriage-rate; but this has been less regular, and of late the
marriage-rate has sometimes been high when the birth-rate was low.[97]
There has, however, been a steady postponement of the average age at
which marriage takes place. On the whole, the main fact that emerges is,
that nowadays in England we marry less and have fewer children.
This is now a familiar fact, and perhaps it should not excite very great
surprise. England is an old and fairly stable country, and it may be
said that it would be unreasonable to expect its population to retain
indefinitely a high degree of fertility. Whether this is so or not,
there is the further consideration to be borne in mind that, during
nearly the whole of the Victorian period, emigration of the most
vigorous stocks took place to a very marked extent. It is not difficult
to see the influence of such emigration in connection with the greatly
diminished population of Ireland, as compared with Scotland; and we may
reasonably infer that it has had its part in the decreased fertility of
the United Kingdom generally.
But we encounter the remarkable fact that this decreased fertility of
the Anglo-Saxon populations is not confined to the United Kingdom. It is
even more pronounced in those very lands to which so many thousand
shiploads of our best people have been taken. In the United States the
question has attracted much attention, and there is little disagreement
among careful observers as to the main facts of the situation. The
question is, indeed, somewhat difficult for two reasons: the
registration of births is not generally compulsory in the United States,
and, even when general facts are ascertained, it is still necessary to
distinguish between the different classes of the population. Our
conclusions must therefore be based, not on the course of a general
birth-rate, but on the most reliable calculations, based on the census
returns and on the average size of the family at different periods, and
among different classes of the population. A bulletin of the Census
Bureau of the United States since 1860 was prepared a few years ago by
Walter F. Wilcox, of Cornell University. It determines from the data in
the census office the proportion of children to the number of women of
child-bearing age in the country at different periods, and shows that
there has been, on the whole, a fall from the beginning to the end of
the last century. Children under ten years of age constituted one-third
of the population at the beginning of the century, and at the end less
than one-fourth of the total population. Between 1850 and 1860 the
proportion of children to women between fifteen and forty-nine years of
age increased, but since 1860 it has constantly decreased. In 1860 the
number of children under five years of age to one thousand women between
fifteen and forty-nine years of age was 634; in 1900 it was only 474.
The proportion of children to potential mothers in 1900 was only
three-fourths as large as in 1860. In the north and west of the United
States the decline has been regular, while in the south the change has
been less regular and the decline less marked. A comparison is made
between the proportion of children in the foreign-born population and in
the American. The former was 710 to the latter's 462. In the coloured
population the proportion of children is greater than in the
corresponding white population.
There can be no doubt whatever that, from the eighteenth century to the
twentieth, there has been a steady decrease in the size of the American
family. Franklin, in the eighteenth century, estimated that the average
number of children to a married couple was eight; genealogical records
show that, while in the seventeenth century it was nearly seven, it was
over six at the end of the eighteenth century. Since then, as Engelmann
and others have shown, there has been a steady decrease in the size of
the family; in the earlier years of the nineteenth century there were
between four and five children to each marriage, while by the end of the
century the number of children had fallen to between four and but little
over one. Engelmann finds that there is but a very trifling difference
in this respect between the upper and the lower social classes; the
average for the labouring classes at St. Louis he finds to be about two,
and for the higher classes a little less. It is among the foreign-born
population, and among those of foreign parents, that the larger families
are found; thus Kuczynski, by analysing the census, finds that in
Massachusetts the average number of children to each married woman among
the American-born of all social classes is 2.7, while among the
foreign-born of all social classes it is 4.5. Moreover, sterility is
much more frequent among American women than among foreign women in
America. Among various groups in Boston, St. Louis, and elsewhere it
varies between 20 and 23 per cent, and in some smaller groups is even
considerably higher, while among the foreign-born it is only 13 per
cent. The net result is that the general natality of the United States
at the present day is about equal to that of France, but that, when we
analyse the facts, the fertility of the old native-born American
population of mainly Anglo-Saxon origin is found to be lower than that
of France. This element, therefore, is rapidly dwindling away in the
United States. The general level of the birth-rate is maintained by the
foreign immigrants, who in many States (as in New York, Massachusetts,
Michigan, and Minnesota) constitute the majority of the population, and
altogether number considerably over ten millions. Among these immigrants
the Anglo-Saxon element is now very small. Indeed, the whole North
European contingent among the American immigrants, which was formerly
nearly 90 per cent of the whole, has since 1890 steadily sunk, and the
majority of the immigrants now belong to the Central, Southern, and
Eastern European stocks. The racial, and, it is probable, the
psychological characteristics of the people of the United States are
thus beginning to undergo, not merely modification, but, it may almost
be said, a revolution. If, as we may well believe, the influence of the
original North-European racial elements--Anglo-Saxon, Dutch, and
French--still continues to persist in the United States, it can only be
the influence of a small aristocracy, maintained by intellect and
character.
When we turn to Canada, a land that is imposing, less by the actual size
of the population than by the vast tracts it possesses for its
development, the question has not yet been fully investigated; but such
facts and official publications as I have been able to obtain all
indicate that, in this matter, the English Canadians approximate to the
native Americans. In the United States it is the European immigrants who
maintain the general population at a productive level, and thus
indirectly oust the Anglo-Saxon element. In Canada the chief dividing
line is between the Anglo-Saxon element and the old French element in
the population; and here it is the French Canadians who are gaining
ground on the English elements in the population. Engelmann ascertained
that an examination of one thousand families in the records of Quebec
Life Assurance companies shows 9.2 children on the average to the French
Canadian child-bearing woman. It is found also from the records of the
French Canadian Society for Artisans that 500 families from town
districts, taken at random, show 9.06 children per family, and 500
families from country districts show 9.33 children per family.[98] It
must be remembered that this average, which is even higher than that
found in Russia, the most prolific of European countries, is not quite
the same as the number of children per marriage; but it indicates very
great fertility, while it may be noted also that sterile marriages are
comparatively rare among French Canadians, although among English
Canadians the proportion of childless families is found to be almost
exactly the same (nearly 20 per cent) as among the infertile Americans
of Massachusetts. The annual Reports of the Registrar-General of
Ontario, a province which is predominantly of Anglo-Saxon origin, show
that the average birth-rate during the decade 1899-1908 has been 22.3
per 1000; it must be noted, however, that there has been a gradual rise
from a rate of 19.4 in 1899 to one of 25.6 in 1908. The report of Mr.
Prévost, the recorder of vital statistics for the predominantly French
province of Quebec, shows much higher rates. The general birth-rate for
the province for the year 1901 is high, being 35.2, much higher than
that of England, and nearly as high as that of Germany. If, however, we
consider the thirty-five counties of the province in which the
population is almost exclusively French Canadian, we find that 35
represents almost the lowest average; as many as twenty-two of these
counties show a rate of over forty, and one (Yamaska) reached 51.52. It
is very evident that, in order to pull down these high birth-rates to
the general level of 35.2, we have to assume a much lower birth-rate
among the counties in which the English element is considerable. It must
be remembered, however, that infant mortality is high among the French
Canadians. The French Canadian Catholic, it has been said, would shrink
in horror from such an unnatural crime as limiting his family before
birth, but he sees nothing repugnant to God or man in allowing the
surplus excess of children to die after birth. In this he is at one with
the Chinese. Dr. E.P. La Chapelle, the President of the Provincial
Conseil d'Hygiène, wrote some years ago to Professor Davidson, in
answer to inquiries: "I do not believe it would be correct to ascribe
the phenomenon to any single cause, and I am convinced it is the result
of several factors. For one, the first cause of the heavy infant
mortality among the French Canadians is their very heavy natality, each
family being composed of an average of twelve children, and instances of
families of fifteen, eighteen, and even twenty-four children being not
uncommon. The super-abundance of children renders, I think, parents less
careful about them."[99]
The net result is a slight increase on the part of the French Canadians,
as compared with the English element in the province, as becomes clear
when we compare the proportion of the population of English, Scotch,
Irish, and all other nationalities with the total population of the
province, now and thirty years ago. In 1871 it was 21 per cent; in 1901
it was only 19 per cent. The decrease of the Anglo-Saxons may here
appear to be small, though it must be remembered that thirty years is
but a short period in the history of a nation; but it is significant
when we bear in mind that the English element has here been constantly
reinforced by immigrants (who, as the experience of the United States
shows, are by no means an infertile class), and that such reinforcement
cannot be expected to continue in the future.
From Australia comes the same story of the decline of Anglo-Saxon
fertility. In nearly all the Australian colonies the highest birth-rate
was reached some twenty or thirty years ago. Since then there has been a
more or less steady fall, accompanied by a marked decrease in the number
of marriages, and a tendency to postpone the age of marriage. One
colony, Western Australia, has a birth-rate which sometimes fluctuates
above that of England; but it is the youngest of the colonies, and, at
present, that with the smallest population, largely composed of recent
immigrants. We may be quite sure that its comparatively high birth-rate
is merely a temporary phenomenon. A very notable fact about the
Australian birth-rate is the extreme rapidity with which the fall has
taken place; thus Queensland, in 1890, had a birth-rate of 37, but by
1899 the rate had steadily fallen to 27, and the Victorian rate during
the same period fell from 33 to 26 per thousand. In New South Wales, the
state of things has been carefully studied by Mr. Coghlan, formerly
Government statistician of New South Wales, who comes to the conclusion
that the proportion of fertile marriages is declining, and that (as in
the United States) it is the recent European immigrants only who show a
comparatively high birth-rate. Until 1880, Coghlan states, the
Australasian birth-rate was about 38 per thousand, and the average
number of children to the family about 5.4. In 1901 the birth-rate had
already fallen to 27.6 and the size of the family to 3.6 children.[100] It
should be added that in all the Australasian colonies the birth-rate
reached its lowest point some years ago, and may now be regarded as in a
state of normal equipoise with a slight tendency to rise. The case of
New Zealand is specially interesting. New Zealand once had the highest
birth-rate of all the Australasian colonies; it is without doubt the
most advanced of all in social and legislative matters; a variety of
social reforms, which other countries are struggling for, are, in New
Zealand, firmly established. Its prosperity is shown by the fact that it
has the lowest death-rate of any country in the world, only 10.2 per
thousand, as against 24 in Austria and 22 in France; it cannot even be
said that the marriage-rate is very low, for it is scarcely lower than
that of Austria, where the birth-rate is high. Yet the birth-rate in New
Zealand fell as the social prosperity of the country rose, reaching its
lowest point in 1899.
We thus find that from the three great Anglo-Saxon centres of the
world--north, west, and south--the same story comes. We need not
consider the case of South Africa, for it is well recognized that there
the English constitute a comparatively infertile fringe, mostly confined
to the towns, while the earlier Dutch element is far more prolific and
firmly rooted in the soil. The position of the Dutch there is much the
same as that of the French in Canada.
Thus we find that among highly civilized races generally, and not least
among the English-speaking peoples who were once regarded as peculiarly
prolific, a great diminution of reproductive activity has taken place
during the past forty years, and is in some countries still taking
place. But before we proceed to consider its significance it may be well
to look a little more closely at our facts.
We have seen that the "crude" birth-rate is not an altogether reliable
index of the reproductive energy of a nation. Various circumstances may
cause an excess or a defect of persons of reproductive age in a
community, and unless we allow for these variations, we cannot estimate
whether that community is exercising its reproductive powers in a fairly
normal manner. But there is another and still more important
consideration always to be borne in mind before we can attach any
far-reaching significance even to the corrected birth-rate. We have,
that is, to bear in mind that a high or a low birth-rate has no meaning,
so far as the growth of a nation is concerned, unless it is considered
in relation to the death-rate. The natural increase of a nation is not
the result of its birth-rate, but of its birth-rate minus its
death-rate. A low birth-rate with a low death-rate (as in Australasia)
produces a far greater natural increase than a low birth-rate with a
rather high death-rate (as in France), and may even produce as great an
increase as a very high birth-rate with a very high death-rate (as in
Russia). Many worthy people might have been spared the utterance of
foolish and mischievous jeremiads, if, instead of being content with a
hasty glance at the crude birth-rate, they had paused to consider this
fairly obvious fact.
There is an intimate connection between a high birth-rate and a high
death-rate, between a low birth-rate and a low death-rate. It may not,
indeed, be an absolutely necessary connection, and is not the outcome of
any mysterious "law." But it usually exists, and the reasons are fairly
obvious. We have already encountered the statement from an official
Canadian source that the large infantile mortality of French Canadian
families is due to parental carelessness, consequent, no doubt, not only
on the dimly felt consciousness that children are cheap, but much more
on inability to cope with the manifold cares involved by a large family.
Among the English working class every doctor knows the thinly veiled
indifference or even repulsion with which women view the seemingly
endless stream of babies they give birth to. Among the Berlin working
class, also, Hamburger's important investigation has indicated how
serious a cause of infantile mortality this may be. By taking 374
working-class women, who had been married twenty years and conceived
3183 times, he found that the net result in surviving children was
relatively more than twice as great among the women who had only had one
child when compared to the women who had had fifteen children. The women
with only one child brought 76.47 per cent of these children to
maturity; the women who had produced fifteen children could only bring
30.66 of them to maturity; the intermediate groups showed a gradual fall
to this low level, the only exception being that the mothers of three
children were somewhat more successful than the mothers of two children.
Among well-to-do mothers Hamburger found no such marked contrast
between the net product of large families as compared to small
families.[101]
It we look at the matter from a wider standpoint we can have no
difficulty in realizing that a community which is reproducing itself
rapidly must always be in an unstable state of disorganization highly
unfavourable to the welfare of its members, and especially of the
new-comers; a community which is reproducing itself slowly is in a
stable and organized condition which permits it to undertake adequately
the guardianship of its new members. The high infantile mortality of the
community with a high birth-rate merely means that that community is
unconsciously making a violent and murderous effort to attain to the
more stable and organized level of the country with a low birth-rate.
The English Registrar-General in 1907 estimated the natural increase by
excess of births over deaths as exceptionally high (higher than that of
England) in several Australian Colonies, in the Balkan States, in
Russia, the Netherlands, the German Empire, Denmark, and Norway, though
in the majority of these lands the birth-rate is very low. On the other
hand, the natural increase by excess of births over deaths is below the
English rate in Austria, in Hungary, in Japan, in Italy, in Sweden,
Switzerland, Spain, Belgium, and Ontario, though in the majority of
these lands the birth-rate is high, and in some very high.[102] In most
cases it is the high death-rate in infancy and childhood which exercises
the counterbalancing influence against a high birth-rate; the death-rate
in adult life may be quite moderate. And with few exceptions we find
that a high infantile mortality accompanies a high birth-rate, while a
low infantile mortality accompanies a low birth-rate. It is evident,
however, that even an extremely high infantile mortality is no
impediment to a large natural increase provided the birth-rate is
extremely high to a more than corresponding extent. But a natural
increase thus achieved seems to be accompanied by far more disastrous
social conditions than when an equally large increase is achieved by a
low infantile death-rate working in association with a low birth-rate.
Thus in Norway on one side of the world and in Australasia on the
opposite side we see a large natural increase effected not by a profuse
expenditure of mostly wasted births but by an economy in deaths, and the
increase thus effected is accompanied by highly favourable social
conditions, and great national vigour. Norway appears to have the lowest
infantile death-rate in Europe.[103]
Rubin has suggested that the fairest measure of a country's well-being,
as regards its actual vitality--without direct regard, of course, to the
country's economic prosperity--is the square of the death-rate divided
by the birth-rate.[104] Sir J.A. Baines, who accepts this test, states
that Argentina with its high birth-rate and low death-rate stands even
above Norway, and Australia still higher, while the climax for the world
is attained by New Zealand, which has attained "the nearest approach to
immortality yet on record."[105] The order of descending well-being in
Europe is thus represented (at the year 1900) by Norway, Sweden,
Denmark, Holland, England, Scotland, Finland, Belgium, Switzerland,
Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Austria, France, and Spain.
On the other hand, in all the countries, probably without exception, in
which a large natural increase is effected by the efforts of an immense
birth-rate to overcome an enormous death-rate the end is only effected
with much friction and misery, and the process is accompanied by a
general retardation of civilization.
"The greater the number of children," as Hamburger puts it, "the greater
the cost of each survivor to the family and to the State."
Russia presents not only the most typical but the most stupendous and
appalling example of this process. Thirty years ago the mortality of
infants under one year was three times that of Norway, nearly double
that of England. More recently (1896-1900) the infantile mortality in
Russia has fallen from 313 to 261, but as that of the other countries
has also fallen it still preserves nearly the same relative position,
remaining the highest in Europe, while if we compare it with countries
outside Europe we find it is considerably more than four times greater
than that of South Australia. In one town in the government of Perm,
some years ago if not still, the mortality of infants under one year
regularly reached 45 per cent, and the deaths of children under five
years constituted half the total mortality. This is abnormally high even
for Russia, but for all Russia it was found that of the boys born in a
single year during the second half of the last century only 50 per cent
reached their twenty-first year, and even of these only 37.6 per cent
were fit for military service. It is estimated that there die in Russia
15 per thousand more individuals than among the same number in England;
this excess mortality represents a loss of 1,650,000 lives to the State
every year.[106]
Thus Russia has the highest birth-rate and at the same time the highest
death-rate. The large countries which, after Russia, have the highest
infantile mortality are Austria, Hungary, Prussia, Spain, Italy, and
Japan; all these, as we should expect, have a somewhat high birth-rate.
The case of Japan is interesting as that of a vigorous young Eastern
nation, which has assimilated Western ways and is encountering the evils
which come of those ways. Japan is certainly worthy of all our
admiration for the skill and vigour with which it has affirmed its young
nationality along Western lines. But when the vital statistics of Japan
are vaguely referred to either as a model for our imitation or as a
threatening peril to us, we may do well to look into the matter a little
more closely. The infantile mortality of Japan (1908) is 157, a very
high figure, 50 per cent higher than that of England, much more than
double that of New Zealand, or South Australia. Moreover, it has rapidly
risen during the last ten years. The birth-rate of Japan in 1901-2 was
high (36), though it has since fallen to the level of ten years ago. But
the death-rate has risen concomitantly (to over 24 per 1000), and has
continued to rise notwithstanding the slight decline in the birth-rate.
We see here a tendency to the sinister combination of a falling
birth-rate with a rising death-rate.[107] It is obvious that such a
tendency, if continued, will furnish a serious problem to Japanese
social reformers, and at the same time make it impossible for Western
alarmists to regard the rise of Japan as a menace to the world.
It is behind China that these alarmists, when driven from every other
position, finally entrench themselves. "The ultimate future of these
islands may be to the Chinese," incautiously exclaims Mr. Sidney Webb,
who on many subjects, unconnected with China, speaks with authority. The
knowledge of the vital statistics of China possessed by our alarmists is
vague to the most extreme degree, but as the knowledge of all of us is
scarcely less vague, they assume that their position is fairly safe.
That, however, is an altogether questionable assumption. It seems to be
quite true--though in the absence of exact statistics it may not be
certain--that the birth-rate in China is very high. But it is quite
certain that the infantile death-rate is extremely high. "Out of ten
children born among us, three, normally the weakest three, will fail to
grow up: out of ten children born in China these weakest three will die,
and probably five more besides," writes Professor Ross, who is
intimately acquainted with Chinese conditions, and has closely
questioned thirty-three physicians practising in various parts of
China.[108] Matignon, a French physician familiar with China, states that
it is the custom for a woman to suckle her child for at least three
years; should pregnancy occur during this period, it is usual, and quite
legal, to procure abortion. Infants brought up by hand are fed on
rice-flour and water, and consequently they nearly all die.[109]
Putting aside altogether the question of infanticide, such a state of
things is far from incredible when we remember the extremely insanitary
state of China, the superstitions that flourish unchecked, and the
famines, floods, and pestilences that devastate the country. It would
appear probable that when vital statistics are introduced into China
they will reveal a condition of things very similar to that we find in
Russia, but in a more marked degree. No doubt it is a state of things
which will be remedied. It is a not unreasonable assumption, supported
by many indications, that China will follow Japan in the adoption of
Western methods of civilization.[110] These methods, as we know, involve
in the end a low birth-rate with a general tendency to a lower
death-rate. Neither in the near nor in the remote future, under present
conditions or under probable future conditions, is there any reason for
imagining that the Chinese are likely to replace the Europeans in
Europe.[111]
This preliminary survey of the ground may enable us to realize that not
only must we be cautious in attaching importance to the crude birth-rate
until it is corrected, but that even as usually corrected the birth-rate
can give us no clue at all to natural increase because there is a marked
tendency for the birth-rate and the infantile death-rate to rise or sink
together. Moreover, it is evident that we have also to realize that from
the point of view of society and civilization there is a vast difference
between the natural increase which is achieved by the effort of an
enormously high birth-rate to overcome an almost correspondingly high
death-rate and the natural increase which is attained by the dominance
of a low birth-rate over a still lower death-rate.
Having thus cleared the ground, we may proceed to attempt the
interpretation of the declining birth-rate which marks civilization, and
to discuss its significance.
II
It must be admitted that it is not usual to consider the question of the
declining birth-rate from a broad or scientific standpoint. As we have
seen, no attempt is usually made to correct the crude birth-rate; still
more rarely is it pointed out that we cannot consider the significance
of a falling birth-rate apart from the question of the death-rate, and
that the net increase or decrease in a nation can only be judged by
taking both these factors into account. It is scarcely necessary to add,
in view of so superficial a way of looking at the problem, that we
hardly ever find any attempt to deal with the more fundamental question
of the meaning of a low birth-rate, and the problematical character of
the advantages of rapid multiplication. The whole question is usually
left to the ignorant preachers of the gospel of brute force, would-be
patriots who desire their own country to increase at the cost of all
other countries, not merely in ignorance of the fact that the crude
birth-rate is not the index of increase, but reckless of the effect
their desire, if fulfilled, would have upon all the higher and finer
ends of living.
When the question is thus narrowly and ignorantly considered, it is
usual to account for the decreased birth-rate, the smaller average
families, and the tendency to postpone the age of marriage, as due
mainly to a love of luxury and vice, combined with a newly acquired
acquaintance with Neo-Malthusian methods,[112] which must be combated, and
may successfully be combated, by inculcating, as a moral and patriotic
duty, the necessity of marrying early and procreating large families.[113]
In France, the campaign against the religious Orders in their
educational capacity, while doubtless largely directed against
educational inefficiency, was also supported by the feeling that such
education is not on the side of family life; and Arsène Dumont, one of
the most vigorous champions of a strenuously active policy for
increasing the birth-rate, openly protested against allowing any place
as teachers to priests, monks, and nuns, whose direct and indirect
influence must degrade the conception of sex and its duties while
exalting the place of celibacy. In the United States, also, Engelmann,
who, as a gynæcologist, was able to see this process from behind the
scenes, urged his fellow-countrymen "to stay the dangerous and criminal
practices which are the main determining factors of decreasing
fecundity, and which deprive women of health, the family of its highest
blessings, and the nation of its staunchest support."[114]
We must, however, look at these phenomena a little more broadly, and
bring them into relation with other series of phenomena. It is almost
beyond dispute that a voluntary restriction of the number of offspring
by Neo-Malthusian practices is at least one of the chief methods by
which the birth-rate has been lowered. It may not indeed be--and
probably, as we shall see, is not--the only method. It has even been
denied that the prevalence of Neo-Malthusian practices counts at all.[115]
Thus while Coghlan, the Government Statistician of New South Wales,
concludes that the decline in the birth-rate in the Australian
Commonwealth was due to "the art of applying artificial checks to
conception," McLean, the Government Statistician of Victoria, concludes
that it was "due mainly to natural causes." [116] He points out that when
the birth-rate in Australia, half a century ago, was nearly 43 per 1000,
the population consisted chiefly of men and women at the reproductive
period of life, and that since then the proportion of persons at these
ages has declined, leading necessarily to a decline in the crude
birth-rate. If we compare the birth-rate of communities among women of
the same age-periods, McLean argues, we may obtain results quite
different from the crude birth-rate. Thus the crude birth-rate of
Buda-Pesth is much higher than that of New South Wales, but if we
ascertain the birth-rate of married women at different age-periods (15
to 20, 20 to 25, etc.) the New South Wales birth-rate is higher for
every age-period than that of Buda-Pesth. McLean considers that in young
communities with many vigorous immigrants the population is normally
more prolific than in older and more settled communities, and that
hardships and financial depression still more depress the birth-rate. He
further emphasizes the important relationship, which we must never lose
sight of in this connection, between a high birth-rate and a high
death-rate, especially a high infantile death-rate, and he believes,
indeed, that "the solution of the problem of the general decline in the
birth-rate throughout all civilized communities lies in the preservation
of human life." The mechanism of the connection would be, he maintains,
that prolonged suckling in the case of living children increases the
intervals between childbearing. As we have seen, there is a tendency,
though not a rigid and invariable necessity,[117] for a high birth-rate to
be associated with a high infantile death-rate, and a low birth-rate
with a low infantile death-rate. Thus in Victoria, we have the striking
fact that while the birth-rate has declined 24 per cent the infantile
death-rate has declined approximately to the still greater extent of 27
per cent.
No doubt the chief cause of the reduction of the birth-rate has been its
voluntary restriction by preventive methods due to the growth of
intelligence, knowledge, and foresight. In all the countries where a
marked decline in the birth-rate has occurred there is good reason to
believe that Neo-Malthusian methods are generally known and practised.
So far as England is concerned this is certainly the case. A few years
ago Mr. Sidney Webb made inquiries among middle-class people in all
parts of the country, and found that in 316 marriages 242 were thus
limited and only 74 unlimited, while for the ten years 1890-9 out of 120
marriages 107 were limited and only 13 unlimited, but as five of these
13 were childless there were only 8 unlimited fertile marriages out of
120. As to the causes assigned for limiting the number of children, in
73 out of 128 cases in which particulars were given under this head the
poverty of the parents in relation to their standard of comfort was a
factor; sexual ill-health--that is, generally, the disturbing effect of
child-bearing--in 24; and other forms of ill-health of the parents in 38
cases; in 24 cases the disinclination of the wife was a factor, and the
death of a parent had in 8 cases terminated the marriage.[118] In the
skilled artisan class there is also good reason to believe that the
voluntary limitation of families is constantly becoming more usual, and
the statistics of benefit societies show a marked decline in the
fertility of superior working-class people during recent years; thus it
is stated by Sidney Webb that the Hearts of Oak Friendly Society paid
benefits on child-birth to 2472 per 10,000 members in 1880; by 1904 the
proportion had fallen to 1165 per 10,000, a much greater fall than
occurred in England generally.
The voluntary adoption of preventive precautions may not be, however,
the only method by which the birth-rate has declined; we may have also
to recognize a concomitant physiological sterility, induced by delayed
marriage and its various consequences; we have also to recognize
pathological sterility due to the impaired vitality and greater
liability to venereal disease of an increasingly urban life; and we may
have to recognize that stocks differ from one another in fertility.
The delay in marriage, as studied in England, is so far apparently
slight; the mean age of marriage for all husbands in England has
increased from 28.43 in 1896 to 28.88 in 1909, and the mean age of all
wives from 26.21 in 1896 to 26.69 in 1909. This seems a very trifling
rate of progression. If, however, we look at the matter in another way
we find that there has been an extremely serious reduction in the number
of marriages between 15 to 20, normally the most fecund of all
age-periods. Between 1876 and 1880 (according to the Registrar-General's
Report for 1909) the proportion of minors in 1000 marriages in England
and Wales was 77.8 husbands and 217.0 wives. In 1909 it had fallen to
only 39.8 husbands and 137.7 wives. It has been held that this has not
greatly affected the decline in the birth-rate. Its tendency, however,
must be in that direction. It is true that Engelmann argued that delayed
marriages had no effect at all on the birth-rate. But it has been
clearly shown that as the age of marriage increases fecundity distinctly
diminishes.[119] This is illustrated by the specially elaborate statistics
of Scotland for 1855;[120] the number of women having children, that is,
the fecundity, was higher in the years 15 to 19, than at any subsequent
age-period, except 20 to 24, and the fact that the earliest age-group is
not absolutely highest is due to the presence of a number of immature
women. In New South Wales, Coghlan has shown that if the average number
of children is 3.6, then a woman marrying at 20 may expect to have five
children, a woman marrying at 28 three children, at 32 two children, and
at 37 one child. Newsholme and Stevenson, again, conclude that the
general law of decline of fertility with advancing age of the mother is
shown in various countries, and that in nearly all countries the mothers
aged 15 to 20 have the largest number of children; the chief exception
is in the case of some northern countries like Norway and Finland, where
women develop late, and there it is the mothers of 20 to 25 who have the
largest number of children.[121] The postponement in the age of marriage
during recent years is, however, so slight that it can only account for
a small part of the decline in the birth-rate; Coghlan calculates that
of unborn possible children in New South Wales the loss of only about
one-sixth is to be attributed to this cause. In London, however, Heron
considers that the recognized connection between a low birth-rate and a
high social standing might have been entirely accounted for sixty years
ago by postponement of marriage, and that such postponement may still
account for 50 per cent of it.[122]
It is not enough, however, to consider the mechanism by which the
birth-rate declines; to realize the significance of the decline we must
consider the causes which set the mechanism in action.
We begin to obtain a truer insight into the meaning of the curve of a
country's birth-rate when we realize that it is in relation with the
industrial and commercial activity of the country.[123] It is sometimes
stated that a high birth-rate goes with a high degree of national
prosperity. That, however, is scarcely the case; we have to look into
the matter a little more closely. And, when we do so, we find that, not
only is the statement of a supposed connection between a high birth-rate
and a high degree of prosperity an imperfect statement; it is altogether
misleading.
If, in the first place, we attempt to consider the state of things among
savages, we find, indeed, great variations, and the birth-rate is not
infrequently low. But, on the whole, it would appear, the marriage-rate,
the birth-rate, and, it may be added, the death-rate are all alike high.
Karl Ranke has investigated the question with considerable care among
the Trumai and Nahuqua Indians of Central Brazil.[124] These tribes are
yet totally uncontaminated by contact with European influences;
consumption and syphilis are alike unknown. In the two villages he
investigated in detail, Ranke found that every man over twenty-five
years of age was married, and that the only unmarried woman he
discovered was feeble-minded. The average size of the families of those
women who were over forty years of age was between five and six
children, while, on the other hand, the mortality among children was
great, and a relatively small proportion of the population reached old
age. We see therefore that, among these fairly typical savages, living
under simple natural conditions, the fertility of the women is as high
as it is among all but the most prolific of European peoples; while, in
striking contrast with European peoples, among whom a large percentage
of the population never marry, and of those who do, many have no
children, practically every man and woman both marries and produces
children.
If we leave savages out of the question and return to Europe, it is
still instructive to find that among those peoples who live under the
most primitive conditions much the same state of things may be found as
among savages. This is notably the case as regards Russia. In no other
great European country do the bulk of the women marry at so early an
age, and in no other is the average size of the family so large. And,
concomitantly with a very high marriage-rate and a very high birth-rate,
we find in Russia, in an equally high degree, the prevalence among the
masses of infantile and general mortality, disease (epidemical and
other), starvation, misery.[125]
So far we scarcely see any marked connection between high fertility and
prosperity. It is more nearly indicated in the high birth-rate of
Hungary--only second to that of Russia, and also accompanied by a high
mortality--which is associated with the rapid and notable development of
a young nationality. The case of Hungary is, indeed, typical. In so far
as high fertility is associated with prosperity, it is with the
prosperity of a young and unstable community, which has experienced a
sudden increase of wealth and a sudden expansion. The case of Western
Australia illustrates the same point. Thirty years ago the marriage-rate
and the birth-rate of this colony were on the same level as those of the
other Australian colonies; but a sudden industrial expansion occurred,
both rates rose, and in 1899 the fertility of Western Australia was
higher than that of any other English-speaking community.[126]
If now we put together the facts observed in savage life and the facts
observed in civilized life, we shall begin to see the real nature of the
factors that operate to raise or lower the fertility of a community. It
is far, indeed, from being prosperity which produces a high fertility,
for the most wretched communities are the most prolific, but, on the
other hand, it is by no means the mere absence of prosperity which
produces fertility, for we constantly observe that the on-coming of a
wave of prosperity elevates the birth-rate. In both cases alike it is
the absence of social-economic restraints which conduces to high
fertility. In the simple, primitive community of savages, serfs, or
slaves, there is no restraint on either nutritive or reproductive
enjoyments; there is no adequate motive for restraint; there are no
claims of future wants to inhibit the gratification of present wants;
there are no high standards, no ideals. Supposing, again, that such
restraints have been established by a certain amount of forethought as
regards the future, or a certain calculation as to social advantages to
be gained by limiting the number of children, a check on natural
fertility is established. But a sudden accession of prosperity--a sudden
excess of work and wages and food--sweeps away this check by apparently
rendering it unnecessary; the natural reproductive impulse is liberated
by this rising wave, and we here see whatever truth there is in the
statement that prosperity means a high birth-rate. In reality, however,
prosperity in such a case merely increases fertility because its sudden
affluence reduces a community to the same careless indifference in
regard to the future, the same hasty snatching at the pleasures of the
moment, as we find among the most hopeless and least prosperous
communities. It is a significant fact, as shown by Beveridge, that the
years when the people of Great Britain marry most are the years when
they drink most. It is in the absence of social-economic restraints--the
absence of the perception of such restraints, or the absence of the
ability to act in accordance with such perception--that the birth-rate
is high.
Arsène Dumont seems to have been one of the first who observed this
significance of the oscillation of the birth-rate, though he expressed
it in a somewhat peculiar way, as the social capillarity theory. It is
the natural and universal tendency of mankind to ascend, he declared; a
high birth-rate and a strong ascensional impulse are mutually
contradictory. Large families are only possible when there is no
progress, and no expectation of it can be cherished; small families
become possible when the way has been opened to progress. "One might
say," Dumont puts it, "that invisible valves, like those which direct
the circulation of the blood, have been placed by Nature to direct the
current of human aspiration in the upward path it has prescribed." As
the proletariat is enabled to enjoy the prospect of rising it comes
under the action of this law of social capillarity, and the birth-rate
falls. It is the effort towards an indefinite perfection, Dumont
declares, which justifies Nature and Man, consoles us for our griefs,
and constitutes our sovereign safeguard against the philosophy of
despair.[127]
When we thus interpret the crude facts of the falling birth-rate,
viewing them widely and calmly in connection with the other social facts
with which they are intimately related, we are able to see how foolish
has been the outcry against a falling birth-rate, and how false the
supposition that it is due to a new selfishness replacing an ancient
altruism.[128] On the contrary, the excessive birth-rate of the early
industrial period was directly stimulated by selfishness. There were no
laws against child-labour; children were produced that they might be
sent out, when little more than babies, to the factories and the mines
to increase their parents' income. The fundamental instincts of men and
women do not change, but their direction can be changed. In this field
the change is towards a higher transformation, introducing a finer
economy into life, diminishing death, disease, and misery, making
possible the finer ends of living, and at the same time indirectly and
even directly improving the quality of the future race.[129] This is now
becoming recognized by nearly all calm and sagacious inquirers.[130] The
wild outcry of many unbalanced persons to-day, that a falling birth-rate
means degeneration and disaster, is so altogether removed from the
sphere of reason that we ought perhaps to regard it as comparable to
those manias which, in former centuries, have assumed other forms more
attractive to the neurotic temperament of those days; fortunately, it is
a mania which, in the nature of things, is powerless to realize itself,
and we need not anticipate that the outcry against small families will
have the same results as the ancient outcry against witches.[131]
It may be proper at this stage to point out that while, in the foregoing
statement, a high birth-rate and a high marriage-rate have been regarded
as practically the same thing, we need to make a distinction. The true
relation of the two rates may be realized when it is stated that, the
more primitive a community is, the more closely the two rates vary
together. As a community becomes more civilized and more complex, the
two rates tend to diverge; the restraints on child-production are
deeper and more complex than those on marriage, so that the removal of
the restraint on marriage by no means removes the restraint on
fertility. They tend to diverge in opposite directions. Farr considered
the marriage-rate among civilized peoples as a barometer of national
prosperity. In former years, when corn was a great national product, the
marriage-rate in England rose regularly as the price of wheat fell. Of
recent years it has become very difficult to estimate exactly what
economic factors affect the marriage-rate. It is believed by some that
the marriage-rate rises or falls with the value of exports.[132] Udny
Yule, however, in an expertly statistical study of the matter,[133] finds
(in agreement with Hooker) that neither exports nor imports tally with
the marriage-rate. He concludes that the movement of prices is a
predominant--though by no means the sole--factor in the change of
marriage-rates, a fall in prices producing a fall in the marriage-rates
and also in the birth-rates, though he also thinks that pressure on the
labour market has forced both rates lower than the course of prices
would lead one to expect. In so far as these causes are concerned, Udny
Yule states, the fall is quite normal and pessimistic views are
misplaced. Udny Yule, however, appears to be by no means confident that
his explanation covers a large part of the causation, and he admits that
he cannot understand the rationale of the connection between
marriage-rates and prices. The curves of the marriage-rates in many
countries indicate a maximum about or shortly before, 1875, when the
birth-rate also tended to reach a maximum, and another rise towards
1900, thus making the intermediate curve concave. There was, however, a
large rise in money wages between 1860 and 1875, and the rise in the
consuming power of the population has been continuous since 1850. Thus
the factors favourable to a high marriage-rate must have risen from 1850
to a maximum about 1870-1875, and since then have fallen continuously.
This statement, which Mr. Udny Yule emphasizes, certainly seems highly
significant from our present point of view. It falls into line with the
view here accepted, that the first result of a sudden access of
prosperity is to produce a general orgy, a reckless and improvident
haste to take advantage of the new prosperity, but that, as the effects
of the orgy wear off, it necessarily gives place to new ideals, and to
higher standards of life which lead to caution and prudence. Mr. N.A.
Hooker seems to have perceived this, and in the discussion which
followed the reading of Udny Yule's paper he set forth what (though it
was not accepted by Udny Yule) may perhaps fairly be regarded as the
sound view of the matter. "During the great expansion of trade prior to
1870," he remarked, "the means of satisfying the desired standard of
comfort were increasing much more rapidly than the rise in the standard;
hence a decreasing age of marriage and a marriage-rate above the normal.
After about 1873, however, the means of satisfying the standard of
comfort no longer increased with the same rapidity, and then a new
factor, he thought, became important, viz. the increased intelligence of
the people."[134] This seems to be precisely the same view of the matter
as I have here sought to set forth; prosperity is not civilization, its
first tendency is to produce a reckless abandonment to the satisfaction
of the crudest impulses. But as prosperity develops it begins to
engender more complex ideals and higher standards; the inevitable result
is a greater forethought and restraint.[135]
If we consider, not the marriage-rate, but the average age at marriage,
and especially the age of the woman, which varies less than that of the
man, the results, though harmonious, would not be quite the same. The
general tendency as regards the age of girls at marriage is summed up by
Ploss and Bartels, in their monumental work on Woman, in the statement:
"It may be said in general that the age of girls at marriage is lower,
the lower the stage of civilization is in the community to which they
belong."[136] We thus see one reason why it is that, in an advanced stage
of civilization, a high marriage-rate is not necessarily associated
with a high birth-rate. A large number of women who marry late may have
fewer children than a smaller number who marry early.
We may see the real character of the restraints on fertility very well
illustrated by the varying birth-rate of the upper and lower social
classes belonging to the same community. If a high birth-rate were a
mark of prosperity or of advanced civilization, we should expect to find
it among the better social class of a community. But the reverse is the
case; it is everywhere the least prosperous and the least cultured
classes of a community which show the highest birth-rate. As we go from
the very poor to the very rich quarters of a great city--whether Paris,
Berlin, or Vienna--the average number of children to the family
diminishes regularly. The difference is found in the country as well as
in the towns. In Holland, for instance, whether in town or country,
there are 5.19 children per marriage among the poor, and only 4.50 among
the rich. In London it is notorious that the same difference appears;
thus Charles Booth, the greatest authority on the social conditions of
London, in the concluding volume of his vast survey, sums up the
condition of things in the statement that "the lower the class the
earlier the period of marriage and the greater the number of children
born to each marriage." The same phenomenon is everywhere found, and it
is one of great significance.
The significance becomes clearer when we realize that an urban
population must always be regarded as more "civilized" than a rural
population, and that, in accordance with that fact, an urban population
tends to be less prolific than a rural population. The town birth-rate
is nearly always lower than the country birth-rate. In Germany this is
very marked, and the rapidly growing urbanization of Germany is
accompanied by a great fall of the birth-rate in the large cities, but
not in the rural districts. In England the fall is more widespread, and
though the birth-rate is much higher in the country than in the towns
the decline in the rural birth-rate is now proceeding more rapidly than
that in the urban birth-rate. England, which once contained a largely
rural population, now possesses a mainly urban population. Every year it
becomes more urban; while the town population grows, the rural
population remains stationary; so that, at the present time, for every
inhabitant of the country in England, there are more than three
town-dwellers. As the country-dweller is more prolific than the
town-dweller, this means that the rural population is constantly being
poured into the towns. The larger our great cities grow, the more
irresistible becomes the attraction which they exert on the children of
the country, who are fascinated by them, as the birds are fascinated by
the lighthouse or the moths by the candle. And the results are not
altogether unlike those which this analogy suggests. At the present
time, one-third of the population of London is made up of immigrants
from the country. Yet, notwithstanding this immense and constant stream
of new and vigorous blood, it never suffices to raise the urban
population to the same level of physical and nervous stability which
the rural population possesses. More alert, more vivacious, more
intelligent, even more urbane in the finer sense, as the urban
population becomes,--not perhaps at first, but in the end,--it
inevitably loses its stamina, its reserves of vital energy. Dr. Cantlie
very properly defines a Londoner as a person whose grandparents all
belonged to London--and he could not find any. Dr. Harry Campbell has
found a few who could claim London grandparents; they were poor
specimens of humanity.[137] Even on the intellectual side there are no
great Londoners. It is well known that a number of eminent men have been
born in London; but, in the course of a somewhat elaborate study of the
origins of British men of genius, I have not been able to find that any
were genuinely Londoners by descent.[138] An urban life saps that calm and
stolid strength which is necessary for all great effort and stress,
physical or intellectual. The finest body of men in London, as a class,
are the London police, and Charles Booth states that only 17 per cent of
the London police are born in London, a smaller proportion than any
other class of the London population except the army and navy. As Mr.
N.C. Macnamara has pointed out, it is found that London men do not
possess the necessary nervous stability and self-possession for police
work; they are too excitable and nervous, lacking the equanimity,
courage, and self-reliance of the rural men. Just in the same way, in
Spain, the bull-fighters, a body of men admirable for their graceful
strength, their modesty, courage, and skill, nearly always come from
country districts, although it is in the towns that the enthusiasm for
bull-fighting is centred. Therefore, it would appear that until urban
conditions of life are greatly improved, the more largely urban a
population becomes, the more is its standard of vital and physical
efficiency likely to be lowered. This became clearly visible during the
South African War; it was found at Manchester (as stated by Dr. T.P.
Smith and confirmed by Dr. Clayton) that among 11,000 young men who
volunteered for enlistment, scarcely more than 10 per cent could pass
the surgeon's examination, although the standard of physique demanded
was extremely low, while Major-General Sir F. Maurice has stated[139]
that, even when all these rejections have been made, of those who
actually are enlisted, at the end of two years only two effective
soldiers are found for every five who enlist. It is not difficult to see
a bearing of these facts on the birth-rate. The civilized world is
becoming a world of towns, and, while the diminished birth-rate of towns
is certainly not mainly the result of impaired vitality, these phenomena
are correlative facts of the first importance for every country which
is using up its rural population and becoming a land of cities.
From our present point of view it is thus a very significant fact that
the equipoise between country-dwellers and town-dwellers has been lost,
that the towns are gaining at the expense of the country whose surplus
population they absorb and destroy. The town population is not only
disinclined to propagate; it is probably in some measure unfit to
propagate.
At the same time, we must not too strongly emphasize this aspect of the
matter; such over-emphasis of a single aspect of highly complex
phenomena constantly distorts our vision of great social processes. We
have already seen that it is inaccurate to assert any connection between
a high birth-rate and a high degree of national prosperity, except in so
far as at special periods in the history of a country a sudden wave of
prosperity may temporarily remove the restraints on natural fertility.
Prosperity is only one of the causes that tend to remove the restraint
on the birth-rate; and it is a cause that is never permanently
effective.
III
To get to the bottom of the matter, we thus find it is necessary to look
into it more closely than is usually attempted. When we ask ourselves
why prosperity fails permanently to remove the restraints on fertility
the answer is, that it speedily creates new restraints. Prosperity and
civilization are far from being synonymous terms. The savage who is
able to glut himself with the whale that has just been stranded on his
coast, is more prosperous than he was the day before, but he is not more
civilized, perhaps a trifle less so. The working community that is
suddenly glutted by an afflux of work and wages is in exactly the same
position as the savage who is suddenly enabled to fill himself with a
rich mass of decaying blubber. It is prosperity; it is not
civilization.[140] But, while prosperity leads at first to the reckless
and unrestrained gratification of the simplest animal instincts of
nutrition and reproduction, it tends, when it is prolonged, to evolve
more complex instincts. Aspirations become less crude, the needs and
appetites engendered by prosperity take on a more social character, and
are sharpened by social rivalries. In place of the earlier easy and
reckless gratification of animal impulses, a peaceful and organized
struggle is established for securing in ever fuller degree the
gratification of increasingly insistent and increasingly complex
desires. Such a struggle involves a deliberate calculation and
forethought, which, sooner or later, cannot fail to be applied to the
question of offspring. Thus it is that affluence, in the long run,
itself imposes a check on reproduction. Prosperity, under the stress of
the urban conditions with which it tends to be associated, has been
transformed into that calculated forethought, that deliberate
self-restraint for the attainment of ever more manifold ends, which in
its outcome we term "civilization."
It is frequently assumed, as we have seen, that the process by which
civilization is thus evolved is a selfish and immoral process. To
procreate large families, it is said, is unselfish and moral, as well as
a patriotic, even a religious duty. This assumption, we now find, is a
little too hasty and is even the reverse of the truth; it is necessary
to take into consideration the totality of the social phenomena
accompanying a high birth-rate, more especially under the conditions of
town life. A community in which children are born rapidly is necessarily
in an unstable position; it is growing so quickly that there is
insufficient time for the conditions of life to be equalized. The state
of ill-adjustment is chronic; the pressure is lifted from off the
natural impulse of procreation, but is increased on all the conditions
under which the impulse is exerted. There is increased overcrowding,
increased filth, increased disease, increased death. It can never
happen, in modern times, that the readjustment of the conditions of life
can be made to keep pace with a high birth-rate. It is sufficient if we
consider the case of English towns, of London in particular, during the
period when British prosperity was most rapidly increasing, and the
birth-rate nearing its maximum, in the middle of the great Victorian
epoch, of which Englishmen are, for many reasons, so proud. It was
certainly not an age lacking in either energy or philanthropy; yet, when
we read the memorable report which Chadwick wrote in 1842, on the
_Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain_, or
the minute study of Bethnal Green which Gavin published in 1848 as a
type of the conditions prevailing in English towns, we realize that the
magnificence of this epoch was built up over circles of Hell to which
the imagination of Dante never attained.
As reproductive activity dies down, social conditions become more
stable, a comparatively balanced state of adjustment tends to be
established, insanitary surroundings can be bettered, disease
diminished, and the death-rate lowered. How much may thus be
accomplished we realize when we compare the admirably precise and
balanced pages in which Charles Booth, in the concluding volumes of his
great work, has summarized his survey of London, with the picture
presented by Chadwick and Gavin half a century earlier. Ugly and painful
as are many of the features of this modern London, the vision which is,
on the whole, evoked is that of a community which has attained
self-consciousness, which is growing into some faint degree of harmony
with its environment, and is seeking to gain the full amount of the
satisfaction which an organized urban life can yield. Booth, who
appears to have realized the significance of a decreased fertility in
the attainment of this progress, hopes for a still greater fall in the
birth-rate; and those who seek to restore the birth-rate of half a
century ago are engaged on a task which would be criminal if it were not
based on ignorance, and which is, in any case, fatuous.
The whole course of zoological evolution reveals a constantly
diminishing reproductive activity and a constantly increasing
expenditure of care on the offspring thus diminished in number.[141] Fish
spawn their ova by the million, and it is a happy chance if they become
fertilized, a highly unlikely chance that more than a very small
proportion will ever attain maturity. Among the mammals, however, the
female may produce but half a dozen or fewer offspring at a time, but
she lavishes so much care upon them that they have a very fair chance
of all reaching maturity. In man, in so far as he refrains from
returning to the beast and is true to the impulse which in him becomes a
conscious process of civilization, the same movement is carried forward.
He even seeks to decrease still further the number of his offspring by
voluntary effort, and at the same time to increase their quality and
magnify their importance.[142]
When in human families, especially under civilized conditions, we see
large families we are in the presence of a reversion to the tendencies
that prevail among lower organisms. Such large families may probably be
regarded, as Näcke suggests, as constituting a symptom of degeneration.
It is noteworthy that they usually occur in the pathological and
abnormal classes, among the insane, the feeble-minded, the criminal, the
consumptive, the alcoholic, etc.[143]
This tendency of the birth-rate to fall with the growth of social
stability is thus a tendency which is of the very essence of
civilization. It represents an impulse which, however deliberate it may
be in the individual, may, in the community, be looked upon as an
instinctive effort to gain more complete control of the conditions of
life, and to grapple more efficiently with the problems of misery and
disease and death. It is not only, as is sometimes supposed, during the
past century that the phenomena may be studied. We have a remarkable
example some centuries earlier, an example which very clearly
illustrates the real nature of the phenomena. The city of Geneva,
perhaps first of European cities, began to register its births, deaths,
and marriages from the middle of the sixteenth century. This alone
indicates a high degree of civilization; and at that time, and for some
succeeding centuries, Geneva was undoubtedly a very highly civilized
city. Its inhabitants really were the "elect," morally and
intellectually, of French Protestantism. In many respects it was a model
city, as Gray noted when he reached it in the course of his travels in
the middle of the eighteenth century. These registers of Geneva show, in
a most illuminating manner, how extreme fertility at the outset,
gradually gave place, as civilization progressed, to a very low
fertility, with fewer and later marriages, a very low death-rate, and a
state of general well-being in which the births barely replaced the
deaths.
After Protestant Geneva had lost her pioneering place in civilization,
it was in France, the land which above all others may in modern times
claim to represent the social aspects of civilization, that the same
tendency most conspicuously appeared. But all Europe, as well as all the
English-speaking lands outside Europe, is now following the lead of
France. In a paper read before the Paris Society of Anthropology a few
years ago, Emile Macquart showed clearly, by a series of ingenious
diagrams, that whereas, fifty years ago, the condition of the birth-rate
in France diverged widely from that prevailing in the other chief
countries of Europe, the other countries are now rapidly following in
the same road along which France has for a century been proceeding
slowly, and are constantly coming closer to her, England closest of all.
In the past, proposals have from time to time been made in France to
interfere with the progress of this downward movement of the
birth-rate--proposals that were sufficiently foolish, for neither in
France nor elsewhere will the individual allow the statistician to
interfere officiously in a matter which he regards as purely intimate
and private. But the real character of this tendency of the birth-rate,
as an essential phenomenon of civilization, with which neither moralist
nor politician can successfully hope to interfere, is beginning to be
realized in France. Azoulay, in summing up the discussion after
Macquart's paper[144] had been read at the Society of Anthropology,
pointed out that "nations must inevitably follow the same course as
social classes, and the more the mass of these social classes becomes
civilized, the more the nation's birth-rate falls; therefore there is
nothing to be done legally and administratively." And another member
added: "Except to applaud."
It is probably too much to hope that so sagacious a view will at once be
universally adopted. The United States and the great English colonies,
for instance, find it difficult to realize that they are not really new
countries, but branches of old countries, and already nearing maturity
when they began their separate lives. They are not at the beginning of
two thousand years of slow development, such as we have passed through,
but at the end of it, with us, and sometimes even a little ahead of us.
It is therefore natural and inevitable that, in a matter in which we are
moving rapidly, Massachusetts and Ontario and New South Wales and New
Zealand should have moved still more rapidly, so rapidly indeed, that
they have themselves failed to perceive that their real natural increase
and the manner in which it is attained place them in this matter at the
van of civilization. These things are, however, only learnt slowly. We
may be sure that the fundamental and complex character of the phenomena
will never be obvious to our fussy little politicians, so apt to
advocate panaceas which have effects quite opposite to those they
desire. But, whatever politicians may wish to do or to leave undone, it
is well to remember that, of the various ideals the world holds, there
are some that lie on the path of our social progress, and others that do
not there lie. We may properly exercise such wisdom as we possess by
utilizing the ideals which are before us, serenely neglecting many
others which however precious they may once have seemed, no longer form
part of the stage of civilization we are now moving towards.
IV
What are the ideals of the stage of civilization we of the Western world
are now moving towards? We have here pushed as far as need be the
analysis of that declining birth-rate which has caused so much anxiety
to those amongst us who can only see narrowly and see superficially. We
have found that, properly understood, there is nothing in it to evoke
our pessimism. On the contrary, we have seen that, in the opinion of the
most distinguished authorities, the energy with which we move in our
present direction, through the exercise of an ever finer economy in
life, may be regarded as a "measure of civilization" in the important
sphere of vital statistics. As we now leave the question, some may ask
themselves whether this concomitant decline in birth-rates and
death-rates may not possibly have a still wider and more fundamental
meaning as a measure of civilization.
We have long been accustomed to regard the East as a spiritual world in
which the finer ends of living were counted supreme, and the merely
materialistic aspects of life, dissociated from the aims of religion and
of art, were trodden under foot. Our own Western world we have humbly
regarded as mainly absorbed in a feverish race for the attainment, by
industry and war, of the satisfaction of the impulses of reproduction
and nutrition, and the crudely material aggrandizement of which those
impulses are the symbol. A certain outward idleness, a semi-idleness, as
Nietzsche said, is the necessary condition for a real religious life,
for a real æsthetic life, for any life on the spiritual plane. The
noisy, laborious, pushing, "progressive" life we traditionally associate
with the West is essentially alien to the higher ends of living, as has
been intuitively recognized and acted on by all those among us who have
sought to pursue the higher ends of living. It was so that the
nineteenth-century philosophers of Europe, of whom Schopenhauer was in
this matter the extreme type, viewed the matter. But when we seek to
measure the tendency of the chief countries of the West, led by France,
England, and Germany, and the countries of the East led by Japan, in the
light of this strictly measurable test of vital statistics, may we not,
perhaps, trace the approach of a revolutionary transposition? Japan,
entering on the road we have nearly passed through, in which the
perpetual clash of a high birth-rate and a high death-rate involves
social disorder and misery, has flung to the winds the loftier ideals it
once pursued so successfully and has lost its fine æsthetic perceptions,
its insight into the most delicate secrets of the soul.[145] And while
Japan, certainly to-day voicing the aspirations of the East, is
concerned to become a great military and industrial power, we in the
West are growing weary of war, and are coming to look upon commerce as a
necessary routine no longer adequate to satisfy the best energies of
human beings. We are here moving towards the fine quiescence involved by
a delicate equipoise of life and of death; and this economy sets free an
energy we are seeking to expend in a juster social organization, and in
the realization of ideals which until now have seemed but the
imagination of idle dreamers. Asia, as an anonymous writer has recently
put it, is growing crude, vulgar, and materialistic; Europe, on the
other hand, is growing to loathe its own past grossness. "London may yet
be the spiritual capital of the world, while Asia--rich in all that gold
can buy and guns can give, lord of lands and bodies, builder of railways
and promulgator of police regulations, glorious in all material
glories--postures, complacent and obtuse, before a Europe content in the
possession of all that matters,"[146] Certainly, we are not there yet, but
the old Earth has seen many stranger and more revolutionary changes than
this. England, as this writer reminds us, was once a tropical forest.
FOOTNOTES:
[90] It must be understood that, from the present point of view, the term
"Anglo-Saxon" covers the peoples of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, as
well as of England.
[91] The decline of the French birth-rate has been investigated in a
Lyons thesis by Salvat, _La Dépopulation de la France_, 1903.
[92] The latest figures are given in the Annual Reports of the
Registrar-General for England and Wales.
[93] Newsholme and Stevenson, "Decline of Human Fertility as shown by
corrected Birth-rates," _Journal of the Royal Statistical Society_,
1906.
[94] Werner Sombart, _International Magazine_, December, 1907.
[95] A.W. Flux, "Urban Vital Statistics in England and Germany," _Journ.
Statist. Soc._, March, 1910.
[96] German infantile mortality, Böhmert states ("Die
Säuglingssterblichkeit in Deutschland und ihre Ursachen," _Die Neue
Generation_, March, 1908), is greater than in any European country,
except Russia and Hungary, about 50 per cent greater than in England,
France, Belgium, or Holland. The infantile mortality has increased in
Germany, as usually happens, with the increased employment of women,
and, largely from this cause, has nearly doubled in Berlin in the course
of four years, states Lily Braun (_Mutterschutz_, 1906, Heft I, p. 21);
but even on this basis it is only 22 per cent in the English textile
industries, as against 38 per cent in the German textile industries.
[97] In England the marriage-rate fell rather sharply in 1875, and showed
a slight tendency to rise about 1900 (G. Udny Yule, "On the Changes in
the Marriage-and Birth-rates in England and Wales," _Journal of the
Statistical Society_, March, 1906). On the whole there has been a real
though slight decline. The decline has been widespread, and is most
marked in Australia, especially South Australia. There has, however,
been a rise in the marriage-rate in Ireland, France, Austria,
Switzerland, Germany, and especially Belgium. The movement for decreased
child-production would naturally in the first place involve decreased
marriage, but it is easy to understand that when it is realized the
marriage is not necessarily followed by conception this motive for
avoiding marriage loses its force, and the marriage-rate rises.
[98] _Medicine_, February, 1904.
[99] Davidson, "The Growth of the French-Canadian Race," _Annals of the
American Academy_, September, 1896.
[100] T.A. Coghlan, _The Decline of the Birth-rate of New South Wales_,
1903. The New South Wales statistics are specially valuable as the
records contain many particulars (such as age of parents, period since
marriage, and number of children) not given in English or most other
records.
[101] C. Hamburger, "Kinderzahl und Kindersterblichkeit," _Die Neue
Generation_, August, 1909.
[102] Looked at in another way, it may be said that if a natural increase,
as ascertained by subtracting the death-rate from the birth-rate, of 10
to 15 per cent be regarded as normal, then, taking so far as possible
the figures for 1909, the natural increase of England and Scotland, of
Germany, of Italy, of Austria and Hungary, of Belgium, is normal; the
natural increase of New South Wales, of Victoria, of South Australia, of
New Zealand, is abnormally high (though in new countries such increase
may not be undesirable) while the natural increase of France, of Spain,
and of Ireland is abnormally low. Such a method of estimation, of
course, entirely leaves out of account the question of the social
desirability of the process by which the normal increase is secured.
[103] Johannsen, _Janus_, 1905.
[104] Rubin, "A Measure of Civilization," _Journal of the Royal
Statistical Society_, March, 1897. "The lowest stage of civilization,"
he points out, "is to go forward blindly, which in this connection means
to bring into the world a great number of children which must, in great
proportion, sink into the grave. The next stage of civilization is to
see the danger and to keep clear of it. The highest stage of
civilization is to see the danger and overcome it." Europe in the past
and various countries in the present illustrate the first stage; France
illustrates the second stage; the third stage is that towards which we
are striving to move to-day.
[105] Baines, "The Recent Growth of Population in Western Europe,"
_Journal of the Royal Statistical Society_, December, 1909.
[106] Various facts and references are given by Havelock Ellis, _The
Nationalization of Health_, chap. XIV.
[107] These are the figures given by the chief Japanese authority,
Professor Takano, _Journal of the Royal Statistical Society_, July,
1910, p. 738.
[108] E.A. Ross, "The Race Fibre of the Chinese," _Popular Science
Monthly_, October, 1911. According to another competent and fairly
concordant estimate, the infantile death-rate of China is 90 per cent.
Of the female infants, probably about 1 in 10 is intentionally
destroyed.
[109] J.J. Matignon, "La Mère et l'Enfant en Chine," _Archives
d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, October to November, 1909.
[110] Arsène Dumont, for instance, points out (_Dépopulation et
Civilization_, p. 116) that the very early marriages and the reckless
fertility of the Chinese cannot fail to cease as soon as the people
adopt European ways.
[111] The confident estimates of the future population of the world which
are from time to time put forward on the basis of the present birth-rate
are quite worthless. A brilliantly insubstantial fabric of this kind, by
B.L. Putnam Weale (_The Conflict of Colour_, 1911), has been justly
criticized by Professor Weatherley (_Popular Science Monthly_, November,
1911).
[112] It is sometimes convenient to use the term "Neo-Malthusianism" to
indicate the voluntary limitation of the family, but it must always be
remembered that Malthus would not have approved of Neo-Malthusianism,
and that Neo-Malthusian practices have nothing to do with the theory of
Malthus. They would not be affected could that theory be conclusively
proved or conclusively disproved.
[113] We even find the demand that bachelors and spinsters shall be taxed.
This proposal has been actually accepted (1911) by the Landtag of the
little Principality of Reuss, which proposes to tax bachelors and
spinsters over thirty years of age. Putting aside the arguable questions
as to whether a State is entitled to place such pressure on its
citizens, it must be pointed out that it is not marriage but the child
which concerns the State. It is possible to have children without
marriage, and marriage does not ensure the procreation of children.
Therefore it would be more to the point to tax the childless. In that
case, it would be necessary to remit the tax in the case of unmarried
people with children, and to levy it in the case of married people
without children. But it has further to be remembered that not all
persons are fitted to have sound children, and as unsound children are a
burden and not a benefit to the State, the State ought to reward rather
than to fine those conscientious persons who refrain from procreation
when they are too poor, or with too defective a heredity, to be likely
to produce, or to bring up, sound children. Moreover, some persons are
sterile, and thorough medical investigation would be required before
they could fairly be taxed. As soon as we begin to analyse such a
proposal we cannot fail to see that, even granting that the aim of such
legislation is legitimate and desirable, the method of attaining it is
thoroughly mischievous and unjustifiable.
[114] J.G. Engelmann, "Decreasing Fecundity," _Philadelphia Medical
Journal_, January 18, 1902.
[115] It has, further, been frequently denied that Neo-Malthusian
practices can affect Roman Catholic countries, since the Church is
precluded from approving of them. That is true. But it is also true
that, as Lagneau long since pointed out, the Protestants of Europe have
increased at more than double the annual rate of the Catholics, though
this relationship has now ceased to be exact. Dumont states
(_Dépopulation et Civilisation_, chap. XVIII) that there is not the
slightest reason to suppose that (apart from the question of poverty)
the faithful have more children than the irreligious; moreover, in
dealing with its more educated members, it is not the policy of the
Church to make indiscreet inquiries (see Havelock Ellis, _Studies in the
Psychology of Sex_, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society," p. 590). A
Catholic bishop is reported to have warned his clergy against referring
in their Lent sermons to the voluntary restriction of conception,
remarking that an excess of rigour in this matter would cause the Church
to lose half her flock. The fall in the birth-rate is as marked in
Catholic as in Protestant countries; the Catholic communities in which
this is not the case are few, and placed in exceptional circumstances.
It must be remembered, moreover, that the Church enjoins celibacy on its
clergy, and that celibacy is practically a Malthusian method. It is not
easy while preaching practical Malthusianism to the clergy to spend much
fervour in preaching against practical Neo-Malthusianism to the laity.
[116] McLean, "The Declining Birth-rate in Australia," _International
Medical Journal of Australasia_, 1904.
[117] Thus in France the low birth-rate is associated with a high
infantile death-rate, which has not yet been appreciably influenced by
the movement of puericulture in France. In England also, at the end of
the last century, the declining birth-rate was accompanied by a rising
infantile death-rate, which is now, however, declining under the
influence of greater care of child-life.
[118] Sidney Webb, _Times_, October 11 and 16, 1906; also _Popular Science
Monthly_, 1906, p. 526.
[119] It is important to remember the distinction between "fecundity" and
"fertility." A woman who has one child has proved that she is fecund,
but has not proved that she is fertile. A woman with six children has
proved that she is not only fecund but fertile.
[120] They have been worked out by C.J. Lewis and J. Norman Lewis,
_Natality and Fecundity_, 1905.
[121] Newsholme and Stevenson, _op. cit._; Rubin and Westergaard,
_Statistik der Ehen_, 1890, p. 95.
[122] D. Heron, "On the Relation of Fertility in Man to Social Status,"
_Drapers' Company Research Memoirs_, No. 1, 1906.
[123] The recognition of this relationship must not be regarded as an
attempt unduly to narrow down the causation of changes in the
birth-rate. The great complexity of the causes influencing the
birth-rate is now fairly well recognized, and has, for instance, been
pointed out by Goldscheid, _Höherentwicklung und Menschenökonomie_, Vol.
I, 1911.
[124] In a paper read at the Brunswick Meeting of the German
Anthropological Society (_Correspondenzblatt_ of the Society, November,
1898); a great many facts concerning the fecundity of women among
savages in various parts of the world are brought together by Ploss and
Bartels, _Das Weib_, Vol I, chap. XXIV.
[125] The proportion of doctors to the population is very small, and the
people still have great confidence in their quacks and witch-doctors.
The elementary rules of sanitation are generally neglected, water
supplies are polluted, filth is piled up in the streets and the
courtyards, as it was in England and Western Europe generally until a
century ago, and the framing of regulations or the incursions of the
police have little effect on the habits of the people. Neglect of the
ordinary precautions of cleanliness is responsible for the wide
extension of syphilis by the use of drinking vessels, towels, etc., in
common. Not only is typhoid prevalent in nearly every province of
Russia, but typhus, which is peculiarly the disease of filth,
overcrowding, and starvation, and has long been practically extinct in
England, still flourishes and causes an immense mortality. The workers
often have no homes and sleep in the factories amidst the machinery, men
and women together; their food is insufficient, and the hours of labour
may vary from twelve to fourteen. When famine occurs these conditions
are exaggerated, and various epidemics ravage the population.
[126] It must, however, be remembered that in small and unstable
communities a considerable margin for error must be allowed, as the
crude birth-rate is unduly raised by an afflux of immigrants at the
reproductive age.
[127] Arsène Dumont, _Dépopulation et Civilisation_, 1890, chap. VI. The
nature of the restraint on fertility has been well set forth by Dr.
Bushee ("The Declining Birth-rate and its Causes," _Popular Science
Monthly_, August, 1903), mainly in the terms of Dumont's "social
capillarity" theory.
[128] Even Dr. Newsholme, usually so cautious and reliable an investigator
in this field, has been betrayed into a reference in this connection
(_The Declining Birth-rate_, 1911, p. 41) to the "increasing rarity of
altruism," though in almost the next paragraph he points out that the
large families of the past were connected with the fact that the child
was a profitable asset, and could be sent to work when little more than
an infant. The "altruism" which results in crushing the minds and bodies
of others in order to increase one's own earnings is not an "altruism"
which we need desire to perpetuate. The beneficial effect of legislation
against child-labour in reducing an unduly high birth-rate has often
been pointed out.
[129] It may suffice to take a single point. Large families involve the
birth of children at very short intervals. It has been clearly shown by
Dr. R.J. Ewart ("The Influence of Parental Age on Offspring," _Eugenics
Review_, October, 1911) that children born at an interval of less than
two years after the birth of the previous child, remain, even when they
have reached their sixth year, three inches shorter and three pounds
lighter than first-born children.
[130] For instance, Goldscheid, in _Höherentwicklung und
Menschenökonomie_; it is also, on the whole, the conclusion of
Newsholme, though expressed in an exceedingly temperate manner, in his
_Declining Birth-rate_.
[131] If, however, our birth-rate fanatics should hear of the results
obtained at the experimental farm at Roseville, California, by Professor
Silas Wentworth, who has found that by placing ewes in a field under the
power wires of an electric wire company, the average production of lambs
is more than doubled, we may anticipate trouble in many hitherto small
families. Their predecessors insisted, in the cause of religion and
morals, on burning witches; we must not be surprised if our modern
fanatics, in the same holy cause, clamour for a law compelling all
childless women to live under electric wires.
[132] J. Holt Schooling, "The English Marriage Rate," _Fortnightly
Review_, June, 1901.
[133] G. Udny Yule, "Changes in the Marriage-and Birth-rate in England,"
_Journal of the Royal Statistical Society_, March, 1906.
[134] At an earlier period Hooker had investigated the same subject
without coming to any very decisive conclusions ("Correlation of the
Marriage-rate with Trade," _Journ. Statistical Soc._, September, 1901).
Minor fluctuations in marriage and in trade per head, he found, tend to
be in close correspondence, but on the whole trade has risen and the
marriage-rate has fallen, probably, Hooker believed, as the result of
the gradual deferment of marriage.
[135] The higher standard need not be, among the mass of the population,
of a very exalted character, although it marks a real progress.
Newsholme and Stevenson (_op. cit._) term it a higher "standard of
comfort." The decline of the birth-rate, they say, "is associated with a
general raising of the standard of comfort, and is an expression of the
determination of the people to secure this greater comfort."
[136] Ploss, _Das Weib_, Vol. I, chap. XX.
[137] It must not, however, be assumed that the rural immigrants are in
the mass better suited to urban life than the urban natives. It is
probable that, notwithstanding their energy and robustness, the
immigrants are less suited to urban conditions than the natives.
Consequently a process of selection takes place among the immigrants,
and the survivors become, as it were, immunized to the poisons of urban
life. But this immunization is by no means necessarily associated with
any high degree of nervous vigour or general physical development.
[138] Havelock Ellis, _A Study of British Genius_, pp. 22, 43.
[139] "National Health: a Soldier's Study," _Contemporary Review_,
January, 1903. The Reports of the Inspector-General of Recruiting are
said to show that the recruits are every year smaller, lighter, and
narrower-chested.
[140] This has been well illustrated during the past forty years in the
flourishing county of Glamorgan in Wales, as is shown by Dr. R.S.
Stewart ("The Relationship of Wages, Lunacy, and Crime in South Wales,"
_Journal of Mental Science_, January, 1904). The staple industry here is
coal, 17 per cent of the population being directly employed in
coal-mining, and wages are determined by the sliding scale as it is
called, according to which the selling price of coal regulates the
wages. This leads to many fluctuations and sudden accesses of
prosperity. It is found that whenever wages rise there is a concomitant
increase of insanity and at the same time a diminished output of coal
due to slacking of work when earnings are greater; there is also an
increase of drunkenness and of crime. Stewart concludes that it is
doubtful whether increased material prosperity is conducive to
improvement in physical and mental status. It must, however, be pointed
out that it is a sudden and unstable prosperity, not necessarily a
gradual and stable prosperity, which is hereby shown to be pernicious.
[141] The relationship is sometimes expressed by saying that the more
highly differentiated the organism the fewer the offspring. According to
Plate we ought to say that, the greater the capacity for parental care
the fewer the offspring. This, however, comes to the same thing, since
it is the higher organisms which possess the increased capacity for
parental care. Putting it in the most generalized zoological way,
diminished offspring is the response to improved environment. Thus in
Man the decline of the birth-rate, as Professor Benjamin Moore remarks
(_British Medical Journal_, August 20, 1910, p. 454), is "the simple
biological reply to good economic conditions. It is a well-known
biological law that even a micro-organism, when placed in unfavourable
conditions as to food and environment, passes into a reproductive phase,
and by sporulation or some special type produces new individuals very
rapidly. The same condition of affairs in the human race was shown even
by the fact that one-half of the births come from the least favourably
situated one-quarter of the population. Hence, over-rapid birth-rate
indicates unfavourable conditions of life, so that (so long as the
population was on the increase) a lower birth-rate was a valuable
indication of a better social condition of affairs, and a matter on
which we should congratulate the country rather than proceed to
condolences."
[142] "The accumulations of racial experience tend to show," remarks Woods
Hutchinson ("Animal Marriage," _Contemporary Review_, October, 1904),
"that by the production of a smaller and smaller number of offspring,
and the expenditure upon those of a greater amount of parental care,
better results can be obtained in efficiency and capacity for survival."
[143] Toulouse, _Causes de la Folie_, p. 91; Magri, _Archivio di
Psichiatria_, 1896, fasc. vi-vii; Havelock Ellis, _A Study of British
Genius_, pp. 106 et seq.
[144] Emile Macquart, "Mortalité, Natalité, Dépopulation," _Bulletin de la
Société d'Anthropologie_, 1902.
[145] It is interesting to observe how Lafcadio Hearn, during the last
years of his life, was compelled, however unwillingly, to recognize this
change. See e.g. his _Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation_, 1904, ch.
XXI, on "Industrial Dangers." The Japanese themselves have recognized
it, and it is the feeling of the decay of their ancient ideals which has
given so great an impetus to new ethical movements, such as that,
described as a kind of elevated materialism, established by Yukichi
Fukuzawa (see _Open Court_, June, 1907).
[146] _Athenæum_, October 7, 1911.
VI
EUGENICS AND LOVE
Eugenics and the Decline of the Birth-rate--Quantity and Quality in
the Production of Children--Eugenic Sexual Selection--The Value of
Pedigrees--Their Scientific Significance--The Systematic Record of
Personal Data--The Proposal for Eugenic Certificates--St.
Valentine's Day and Sexual Selection--Love and Reason--Love Ruled
by Natural Law--Eugenic Selection not opposed to Love--No Need for
Legal Compulsion--Medicine in Relation to Marriage
I
During recent years the question of the future of the human race has
been brought before us in a way it has never been brought before. The
great expansive movement in civilized countries is over. Whereas, fifty
years ago, France seemed to present a striking contrast to other
countries in her low and gradually falling birth-rate, to-day, though
she has herself now almost reached a stationary position, France is seen
merely to have been the leader in a movement which is common to all the
more highly civilized nations. They are all now moving rapidly in the
direction in which she moved slowly. It was inevitable that this
movement, world-wide as it is, should call forth energetic protests, for
there is no condition of things so bad but it finds some to advocate its
perpetuation. There has, therefore, been much vigorous preaching against
"race suicide" by people who were deaf to the small voice of reason,
who failed to understand that this matter could not be settled by mere
consideration of the crude birth-rates, and that, even if it could, we
should have still to realize that, as an economist remarks, it is to the
decline of the birth-rate only that we probably owe it that the modern
civilized world has been saved from economic disaster.[147]
But whatever the causes of the declining birth-rate it is certain that
even when they are within our control they are of far too intimate a
character for the public moralist to be permitted to touch them, even
though we consider them to be in a disastrous state. It has to be
recognized that we are here in the presence, not of a merely local or
temporary tendency which might be shaken off with an effort, but of a
great fundamental law of civilization; and the fact that we encounter it
in our own race merely means that we are reaching a fairly high stage of
civilization. It is far from the first time, in the history of the
world, that the same phenomenon has been witnessed. It was seen in
Imperial Rome; it was seen, again, in the "Protestant Rome," Geneva.
Wherever are gathered together an exceedingly fine race of people, the
flower of the race, individuals of the highest mental and moral
distinction, there the birth-rate falls steadily. Vice or virtue alike
avails nothing in this field; with high civilization fertility
inevitably diminishes.
II
Under these circumstances it was to be expected that a new ideal should
begin to flash before men's eyes. If the ideal of _quantity_ is lost to
us, why not seek the ideal of _quality_? We know that the old rule:
"Increase and multiply" meant a vast amount of infant mortality, of
starvation, of chronic disease, of widespread misery. In abandoning that
rule, as we have been forced to do, are we not left free to seek that
our children, though few, should be at all events fit, the finest, alike
in physical and psychical constitution, that the world has seen?
Thus has come about the recent expansion of that conception of
_Eugenics_, or the science and art of Good Breeding in the human race,
which a group of workers, pioneered by Francis Galton[148]--at first in
England and later in America, Germany and elsewhere--have been
developing for some years past. Eugenics is beginning to be felt to
possess a living actuality which it failed to possess before. Instead of
being a benevolent scientific fad it begins to present itself as the
goal to which we are inevitably moving.
The cause of Eugenics has sometimes been prejudiced in the public mind
by a comparison with the artificial breeding of domestic animals. In
reality the two things are altogether different. In breeding animals a
higher race of beings manipulates a lower race with the object of
securing definite points that are of no use whatever to the animals
themselves, but of considerable value to the breeders. In our own race,
on the other hand, the problem of breeding is presented in an entirely
different shape. There is as yet no race of super-men who are prepared
to breed man for their own special ends. As things are, even if we had
the ability and the power, we should surely hesitate before we bred men
and women as we breed dogs or fowls. We may, therefore, quite put aside
all discussion of eugenics as a sort of higher cattle-breeding. It would
be undesirable, even if it were not impracticable.
But there is another aspect of Eugenics. Human eugenics need not be, and
is not likely to be, a cold-blooded selection of partners by some
outside scientific authority. But it may be, and is very likely to be, a
slowly growing conviction--first among the more intelligent members of
the community and then by imitation and fashion among the less
intelligent members--that our children, the future race, the
torch-bearers of civilization for succeeding ages, are not the mere
result of chance or Providence, but that, in a very real sense, it is
within our power to mould them, that the salvation or damnation of many
future generations lies in our hands since it depends on our wise and
sane choice of a mate. The results of the breeding of those persons who
ought never to be parents is well known; the notorious case of the Jukes
family is but one among many instances. We could scarcely expect in any
community that individuals like the Jukes would take the initiative in
movements for the eugenic development of the race, but it makes much
difference whether such families exist in an environment like our own
which is indifferent to the future of the race, or whether they are
surrounded by influences of a more wholesome character which can
scarcely fail to some extent to affect, and even to control, the
reckless and anti-social elements in the community.
In considering this question, therefore, we are justified in putting
aside not only any kind of human breeding resembling the artificial
breeding of animals, but also, at all events for the present, every
compulsory prohibition on marriage or procreation. We must be content to
concern ourselves with ideals, and with the endeavour to exert our
personal influence in the realization of these ideals.
III
Such ideals cannot, however, be left in the air; if they depend on
individual caprice nothing but fruitless confusion can come of them.
They must be firmly grounded on a scientific basis of ascertained fact.
This was always emphasized by Galton. He not only initiated schemes for
obtaining, but actually to some extent obtained, a large amount of
scientific knowledge concerning the special characteristics and
aptitudes of families, and his efforts in this direction have since been
largely extended and elaborated.[149] The feverish activities of modern
life, and the constant vicissitudes and accidents that overtake families
to-day, have led to an extraordinary indifference to family history and
tradition. Our forefathers, from generation to generation, carefully
entered births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths in the fly-leaf of the
Family Bible. It is largely owing to these precious entries that many
are able to carry their family history several centuries further back
than they otherwise could. But nowadays the Family Bible has for the
most part ceased to exist, and nothing else has taken its place. If a
man wishes to know what sort of stocks he has come from, unless he is
himself an antiquarian, or in a position to employ an antiquarian to
assist him, he can learn little, and in the most favourable position he
is helpless without clues; though with such clues he might often learn
much that would be of the greatest interest to him. The entries in the
Family Bible, however, whatever their value as clues and even as actual
data, do not furnish adequate information to serve as a guide to the
different qualities of stocks; we need far more detailed and varied
information in order to realize the respective values of families from
the point of view of eugenics. Here, again, Galton had already realized
the need for supplying a great defect in our knowledge, and his
Life-history Albums showed how the necessary information may be
conveniently registered.
The accumulated histories of individual families, it is evident, will in
time furnish a foundation on which to base scientific generalizations,
and eventually, perhaps, to justify practical action. Moreover, a vast
amount of valuable information on which it is possible to build up a
knowledge of the correlated characteristics of families, already lies at
present unused in the great insurance offices and elsewhere. When it is
possible to obtain a large collection of accurate pedigrees for
scientific purposes, and to throw them into a properly tabulated form,
we shall certainly be in a position to know more of the qualities of
stocks, of their good and bad characteristics, and of the degree in
which they are correlated.[150]
In this way we shall, in time, be able to obtain a clear picture of the
probable results on the offspring of unions between any kind of people.
From personal and ancestral data we shall be able to reckon the probable
quality of the offspring of a married couple. Given a man and woman of
known personal qualities and of known ancestors, what are likely to be
the personal qualities, physical, mental and moral, of the children?
That is a question of immense importance both for the beings themselves
whom we bring into the world, for the community generally, and for the
future race.
Eventually, it seems evident, a general system, whether private or
public, whereby all personal facts, biological and mental, normal and
morbid, are duly and systematically registered, must become inevitable
if we are to have a real guide as to those persons who are most fit, or
most unfit, to carry on the race.[151] Unless they are full and frank such
records are useless. But it is obvious that for a long time to come such
a system of registration must be private. According to the belief which
is still deeply rooted in most of us, we regard as most private those
facts of our lives which are most intimately connected with the life of
the race, and most fateful for the future of humanity. The feeling is no
doubt inevitable; it has a certain rightness and justification. As,
however, our knowledge increases we shall learn that we are, on the one
hand, a little more responsible for future generations than we are
accustomed to think, and, on the other hand, a little less responsible
for our own good or bad qualities. Our fiat makes the future man, but,
in the same way, we are ourselves made by a choice and a will not our
own. A man may indeed, within limits, mould himself, but the materials
he can alone use were handed on to him by his parents, and whether he
becomes a man of genius, a criminal, a drunkard, an epileptic, or an
ordinarily healthy, well-conducted, and intelligent citizen, must depend
at least as much on his parents as on his own effort or lack of effort,
since even the aptitude for effective effort is largely inborn. As we
learn to look on the facts from the only sound standpoint of heredity,
our anger or contempt for a failing and erring individual has to give
way to the kindly but firm control of a weakling. If the children's
teeth have been set on edge it is because the parents have eaten sour
grapes.
If, however, we certainly cannot bring legal or even moral force to
compel everyone to maintain such detailed registers of himself, his
ancestral stocks, and his offspring--to say nothing of inducing him to
make them public--there is something that we can do. We can make it to
his interest to keep such a record.[152] If it became an advantage in
life to a man to possess good ancestors, and to be himself a good
specimen of humanity in mind, character, and physique, we may be sure
that those who are above the average in these matters will be glad to
make use of that superiority. Insurance offices already make an
inquisition into these matters, to which no one objects, because a man
only submits to it for his own advantage; while for military and some
other services similar inquiries are compulsory. Eugenic certificates,
according to Galton's proposal, would be issued by a suitably
constituted authority to those candidates who chose to apply for them
and were able to pass the necessary tests. Such certificates would imply
an inquiry and examination into the ancestry of the candidate as well as
into his own constitution, health, intelligence and character; and the
possession of such a certificate would involve a superiority to the
average in all these respects. No one would be compelled to offer
himself for such examination, just as no one is compelled to seek a
university degree. But its possession would often be an advantage. There
is nothing to prevent the establishment of a board of examiners of this
kind to-morrow, and we may be sure that, once established, many
candidates would hasten to present themselves.[153] There are obviously
many positions in life wherein a certificate of this kind of superiority
would be helpful. But its chief distinction would be that its possession
would be a kind of patent of natural nobility; the man or woman who held
it would be one of Nature's aristocrats, to whom the future of the race
might be safely left without further question.
IV
By happy inspiration, or by chance, Galton made public his programme of
eugenic research, in a paper read before the Sociological Society, on
February 14, the festival of St. Valentine. Although the ancient
observances of that day have now died out, St. Valentine was for many
centuries the patron saint of sexual selection, more especially in
England. It can scarcely be said that any credit in this matter belongs
to the venerable saint himself; it was by an accident that he achieved
his conspicuous position in the world. He was simply a pious Christian
who was beheaded for his faith in Rome under Claudius. But it so
happened that his festival fell at that period in early spring when
birds were believed to pair, and when youths and maidens were accustomed
to select partners for themselves or for others. This custom--which has
been studied together with many allied primitive practices by
Mannhardt[154]--was not always carried out on February 14, sometimes it
took place a little later. In England, where it was strictly associated
with St. Valentine's Day, the custom was referred to by Lydgate, and by
Charles of Orleans in the rondeaus and ballades he wrote during his long
imprisonment in England. The name Valentins or Valentines was also
introduced into France (where the custom had long existed) to designate
the young couples thus constituted. This method of sexual selection,
half playful, half serious, flourished especially in the region between
England, the Moselle, and the Tyrol. The essential part of the custom
lay in the public choice of a fitting mate for marriageable girls.
Sometimes the question of fitness resolved itself into one of good
looks; occasionally the matter was settled by lot. There was no
compulsion about these unions; they were often little more than a game,
though at times they involved a degree of immorality which caused the
authorities to oppose them. But very frequently the sexual selection
thus exerted led to weddings, and these playful Valentine unions were
held to be a specially favourable prelude to a happy marriage.
It is scarcely necessary to show how the ancient customs associated with
St. Valentine's Day are taken up again and placed on a higher plane by
the great movement which is now beginning to shape itself among us. The
old Valentine unions were made by a process of caprice tempered more or
less by sound instincts and good sense. In the sexual selection of the
future the same results will be attained by more or less deliberate and
conscious recognition of the great laws and tendencies which
investigation is slowly bringing to light. The new St. Valentine will be
a saint of science rather than of folk-lore.
Whenever such statements as these are made it is always retorted that
love laughs at science, and that the winds of passion blow where they
list.[155] That, however, is by no means altogether true, and in any case
it is far from covering the whole of the ground. It is hard to fight
against human nature, but human nature itself is opposed to
indiscriminate choice of mates. It is not true that any one tends to
love anybody, and that mutual attraction is entirely a matter of chance.
The investigations which have lately been carried out show that there
are certain definite tendencies in this matter, that certain kinds of
people tend to be attracted to certain kinds, especially that like are
attracted to like rather than unlike to unlike, and that, again, while
some kinds of people tend to be married with special frequency other
kinds tend to be left unmarried.[156] Sexual selection, even when left to
random influences, is still not left to chance; it follows definite and
ascertainable laws. In that way the play of love, however free it may
appear, is really limited in a number of directions. People do not tend
to fall in love with those who are in racial respects a contrast to
themselves; they do not tend to fall in love with foreigners; they do
not tend to be attracted to the ugly, the diseased, the deformed. All
these things may happen, but they are the exception and not the rule.
These limitations to the roving impulses of love, while very real, to
some extent vary at different periods in accordance with the ideals
which happen to be fashionable. In more remote ages they have been still
more profoundly modified by religious and social ideas; polygamy and
polyandry, the custom of marrying only inside one's own caste, or only
outside it, all these various and contradictory plans have been easily
accepted at some place and some time, and have offered no more conscious
obstacle to the free play of love than among ourselves is offered by the
prohibition against marriage between near relations.
Those simple-minded people who talk about the blind and irresistible
force of passion are themselves blind to very ordinary psychological
facts. Passion--when it occurs--requires in normal persons cumulative
and prolonged forces to impart to it full momentum.[157] In its early
stages it is under the control of many influences, including influences
of reason. If it were not so there could be no sexual selection, nor any
social organization.[158]
The eugenic ideal which is now developing is thus not an artificial
product, but the reasoned manifestation of a natural instinct, which has
often been far more severely strained by the arbitrary prohibitions of
the past than it is ever likely to be by any eugenic ideals of the
future. The new ideal will be absorbed into the conscience of the
community, whether or not like a kind of new religion,[159] and will
instinctively and unconsciously influence the impulses of men and women.
It will do all this the more surely since, unlike the taboos of savage
societies, the eugenic ideal will lead men and women to reject as
partners only the men and women who are naturally unfit--the diseased,
the abnormal, the weaklings--and conscience will thus be on the side of
impulse.
It may indeed be pointed out that those who advocate a higher and more
scientific conscience in matters of mating are by no means plotting
against love, which is for the most part on their side, but rather
against the influences that do violence to love: on the one hand, the
reckless and thoughtless yielding to mere momentary desire, and, on the
other hand, the still more fatal influences of wealth and position and
worldly convenience which give a factitious value to persons who would
never appear attractive partners in life were love and eugenic ideals
left to go hand in hand. It is such unions, and not those inspired by
the wholesome instincts of wholesome lovers, which lead, if not to the
abstract "deterioration of the race," at all events in numberless cases
to the abiding unhappiness of persons who choose a mate without
realizing how that mate is likely to develop, nor what sort of children
may probably be expected from the union. The eugenic ideal will have to
struggle with the criminal and still more resolutely with the rich; it
will have few serious quarrels with normal and well constituted lovers.
It will now perhaps be clear how it is that the eugenic conception of
the improvement of the race embodies a new ideal. We are familiar with
legislative projects for compulsory certificates as a condition of
marriage. But even apart from all the other considerations which make
such schemes both illusory and undesirable, these externally imposed
regulations fail to go to the root of the matter. If they are voluntary,
if they spring out of a fine eugenic aspiration, it is another matter.
Under these conditions the method may be carried out at once. Professor
Grasset has pointed out one way in which this may be effected. We
cannot, he remarks, follow the procedure of a military _conseil de
revision_ and compulsorily reject the candidate for a definite defect.
But it would be possible for the two families concerned to call a
conference of their two family doctors, after examination of the
would-be bride and bridegroom, permitting the doctors to discuss freely
the medical aspects of the proposed union, and undertaking to accept
their decision, without asking for the revelation of any secrets, the
families thus remaining ignorant of the defect which prevented this
union but might not prevent another union, for the chief danger in many
cases comes from the conjunction of convergent morbid tendencies.[160] In
France, where much power remains with the respective families, this
method might be operative, provided complete confidence was felt in the
doctors concerned. In some countries, such as England, the prospective
couple might prefer to take the matter into their own hands, to discuss
it frankly, and to seek medical advice on their own account; this is now
much more frequently done than was formerly the case. But all compulsory
projects of this kind, and indeed any mere legislation, cannot go to the
root of the matter. For in the first place, what we need is a great body
of facts, and a careful attention to the record and registration and
statistical tabulation of personal and family histories. In the second
place, we need that sound ideals and a high sense of responsibility
should permeate the whole community, first its finer and more
distinguished members and then, by the usual contagion that rules in
such matters, the whole body of its members.[161] In time, no doubt, this
would lead to concerted social action. We may reasonably expect that a
time will come when if, for instance, an epileptic woman conceals her
condition from the man she is marrying it would generally be felt that
an offence has been committed serious enough to invalidate the marriage.
We must not suppose that lovers would be either willing or competent to
investigate each other's family and medical histories. But it would be
at least as easy and as simple to choose a partner from those persons
who had successfully passed the eugenic test--more especially since such
persons would certainly be the most attractive group in the
community--as it is for an Australian aborigine to select a conjugal
partner from one social group rather than from any other.[162] It is a
matter of accepting an ideal and of exerting our personal and social
influence in the direction of that ideal. If we really seek to raise the
level of humanity we may in this way begin to do so to-day.
NOTE ON THE LIFE-HISTORY RECORD
The extreme interest of a Life-History Record is obvious, even apart
from its eventual scientific value. Most of us would have reason to
congratulate ourselves had such records been customary when we were
ourselves children. It is probable that this is becoming more generally
realized, though until recently only the pioneers have here been active.
"I started a Life-History Album for each of my children," writes Mr.
F.H. Perrycoste in a private letter, "as soon as they were born; and by
the time they arrive at man's and woman's estate they will have valuable
records of their own physical, mental, and moral development, which
should be of great service to them when they come to have children of
their own, whilst the physical--in which are included, of course,
medical--records may at any time be of great value to their own medical
advisers in later life. I have reason to regret that some such Albums
were not kept for my wife and myself, for they would have afforded the
necessary data by which to 'size up' the abilities and conduct of our
children. I know, for instance, pretty well what was my own Galtonian
rank as a schoolboy, and I am constantly asking myself whether my boy
will do as well, better, or worse. Now fortunately I do happen to
remember roughly what stages I had reached at one or two transition
periods of school-life; but if only such an Album had been kept for me,
I could turn it up and check my boy against myself in each subject at
each yearly stage. You will gather from this that I consider it of great
importance that ample details of school-work and intellectual
development should be entered in the Album. I find the space at my
disposal for these entries insufficient, and consequently I summarize in
the Album and insert a reference to sheets of fuller details which I
keep; but it might be well, when another edition of the Album comes to
be published, to agitate for the insertion of extra blank pages after
the age of eight or nine, in order to allow of the transcription of full
school-reports. However, the great thing is to induce people to keep an
Album that will form the nucleus round which any number of fuller
records can cluster."
It is not necessary that the Galtonian type of Album should be rigidly
preserved, and I am indebted to "Henry Hamill," the author of _The Truth
We Owe to Youth_, for the following suggestions as to the way in which
such a record may be carried out:
"The book should not be a mere dry rigmarole, but include a certain
appeal to sentiment. The subject should begin to make the entries
himself when old enough to do so properly, i.e. so that the book will
not be disfigured--though indeed the naivity of juvenile phrasing, etc.,
may be of a particular interest. From a graphological point of view, the
evolution of the handwriting will be of interest; and if for no other
reason, specimens of handwriting ought to appear in it from year to
year, while the parent is still writing the other entries. There may now
be a certain sacramental character in the life-history. The subject
should be led to regard the book as a witness, and to perceive in it an
additional reason for avoiding every act the mention of which would be a
disfigurement of the history. At the same time, the nature of the
witness may be made to correct the wrong notions prevailing as to the
worthiness of acts, and to sanctify certain of them that have been
foolishly degraded. Thus there may be left several leaves blank before
the pages of forms for filling in anthropometric and physiological data,
and the headings may be made to suggest a worthier way of viewing these
things. For instance, there may be the indication 'Place and time of
conception,' and a specimen entry may be of service to lead commonplace
minds into a more reverent and poetical view than is now usual--such as
the one I culled from the life-history of an American child: 'Our
second child M---- was conceived on Midsummer Day, under the shade of a
friendly sycamore, beneath the cloudless blue of Southern California.'
Or, instead of restricting the reference to the particular episode, it
may refer to the whole chapter of Love which that episode adorned, more
especially in the case of a first child, when a poetical history of the
mating of the parents may precede. The presence of the idea that the
book would some day be read by others than the intimate circle, would
restrain the tendency of some persons to inordinate self-revelation and
'gush.' Such books as these would form the dearest heirlooms of a
family, helping to knit its bonds firmer, and giving an insight into
individual character which would supplement the more tangible data for
the pedigree in a most valuable way. The photographs taken every three
months or so ought to be as largely as possible nude. The gradual
transition from childhood would help to prevent an abrupt feeling
arising, and the practice would be a valuable aid to the rehabilitation
of the nude, and of genuineness in our daily life, no matter in what
respect. This leads to the difficult question of how far moral aspects
should be entertained. 'To-day Johnnie told his first fib; we pretended
to disbelieve everything else he said, and he began to see that lying
was bad policy.' 'Chastised Johnnie for the first time for pulling the
wings off a fly; he wanted to know why we might kill flies outright, but
not mutilate them,' and so on. For in this way parents would train
themselves in the psychology of education and character-building, though
books by specially gifted parents would soon appear for their guidance.
"Of course, whatever relevant circumstances were available about the
ante-natal period or the mother's condition would be noted (but who
would expect a mother to note that she laced tight up to such and such a
month? Perhaps the keeping of a log like this might act as a deterrent).
Similarly, under diet and regimen, year by year, the assumption of
breast-feeding--provision of columns for the various incidents of
it--weight before and after feeding, etc., would have a great suggestive
value.
"The provision under diet and regimen of columns for 'drug habits, if
any'--tea, coffee, alcohol, nicotine, morphia, etc.--would have a
suggestive value and operate in the direction of the simple life and a
reverence for the body. Some good aphorisms might be strewed in, such
as:
"'If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred' (Whitman).
"As young people circulate their 'Books of Likes and Dislikes,' etc.,
and thus in an entertaining way provide each other with insight into
mutual character, so the Life-History need not be an _arcanum_--at least
where people have nothing to be ashamed of. It would be a very trying
ordeal, no doubt, to admit even intimate friends to this confidence.
_But as eugenics spread, concealment of taint will become almost
impracticable_, and the facts may as well be confessed. But even then
there will be limitations. There might be an esoteric book for the
individual's own account of himself. Such important items as the
incidence of puberty (though notorious in some communities) could not
well be included in a book open even to the family circle, for
generations to come. The quiescence of the genital sense, the sedatives
naturally occurring, important as these are, and occupying the
consciousness in so large a degree, would find no place; nevertheless, a
private journal of the facts would help to steady the individual, and
prove a check against disrespect to his body.
"As the facts of individual evolution would be noted, so likewise would
those of dissolution. The first signs of decay--the teeth, the
elasticity of body and mind--would provide a valuable sphere for all who
are disposed to the diary-habit. The journals of individuals with a gift
for introspection would furnish valuable material for psychologists in
the future. Life would be cleansed in many ways. Journals would not have
to be bowdlerized, like Marie Bashkirtseff's, for the morbidity that
gloats on the forbidden would have a lesser scope, much that is now
regarded as disgraceful being then accepted as natural and right.
"The book might have several volumes, and that for the periods of
infancy and childhood might need to be less private than the one for
puberty. More, in his _Utopia_, demands that lovers shall learn to know
each other as they really are, i.e. naked. That is now the most Utopian
thing in More's _Utopia_. But the lovers might communicate their
life-histories to each other as a preliminary.
"The whole plan would, of course, finally have to be over-hauled by the
so-called 'man of the world.'"
Not everyone may agree with this conception of the Life-History Album
and its uses. Some will prefer a severely dry and bald record of
measurements. At the present time, however, there is room for very
various types of such documents. The important point is to realize that,
in some form or another, a record of this kind from birth or earlier is
practicable, and constitutes a record which is highly desirable alike on
personal, social, and scientific grounds.
FOOTNOTES:
[147] Dr. Scott Nearing, "Race Suicide _versus_ Over-Population," _Popular
Science Monthly_, January, 1911. And from the biological side Professor
Bateson concludes (_Biological Fact and the Structure of Society_, p.
23) that "it is in a decline in the birth-rate that the most promising
omen exists for the happiness of future generations."
[148] Galton himself, the grandson of Erasmus Darwin, and the half-cousin
of Charles Darwin, may be said to furnish a noble illustration of an
unconscious process of eugenics. (He has set forth his ancestry in
_Memories of My Life_.) On his death, the editor of the _Popular Science
Monthly_ wrote, referring to the fact that Galton was nominated to
succeed William James in the honorary membership of an Academy of
Science: "These two men are the greatest whom he has known. James
possessed the more complicated personality; but they had certain common
traits--a combination of perfect aristocracy with complete democracy,
directness, kindliness, generosity, and nobility beyond all measure. It
has been said that eugenics is futile because it cannot define its end.
The answer is simple--we want men like William James and Francis Galton"
(_Popular Science Monthly_, _March_, 1911.) Probably most of those who
were brought, however slightly, in contact with these two fine
personalities will subscribe to this conclusion.
[149] Galton chiefly studied the families to which men of intellectual
ability belong, especially in his _Hereditary Genius_ and _English Men
of Science_; various kinds of pathological families have since been
investigated by Karl Pearson and his co-workers (see the series of
_Biometrika_); the pedigrees of the defective classes (especially the
feeble-minded and epileptic) are now being accurately worked out, as by
Godden, at Vineland, New Jersey, and Davenport, in New York (see e.g.
_Eugenics Review_, April, 1911, and _Journal of Nervous and Mental
Disease_, November, 1911).
[150] "When once more the importance of good birth comes to be recognized
in a new sense," wrote W.C.D. Whetham and Mrs. Whetham (in _The Family
and the Nation_, p. 222), "when the innate physical and mental qualities
of different families are recorded in the central sociological
department or scientifically reformed College of Arms, the pedigrees of
all will be known to be of supreme interest. It would be understood to
be more important to marry into a family with a good hereditary record
of physical and mental and moral qualities than it ever has been
considered to be allied to one with sixteen quarterings."
[151] The importance of such biographical records of aptitude and
character are so great that some, like Schallmayer (_Vererbung und
Auslese_, 2nd ed., 1910, p. 389) believe that they must be made
universally obligatory. This proposal, however, seems premature.
[152] In many undesigned and unforeseen ways these registers may be of
immense value. They may even prove the means of overthrowing our
pernicious and destructive system of so-called "education." A step in
this direction has been suggested by Mr. R.T. Bodey, Inspector of
Elementary Schools, at a meeting of the Liverpool branch of the Eugenics
Education Society: "Education facilities should be carefully distributed
with regard to the scientific likelihood of their utilization to the
maximum of national advantage, and this not for economic reasons only,
but because it was cruel to drag children from their own to a different
sphere of life, and cruel to the class they deserted. Since the
activities of the nation and the powers of the children were alike
varied in kind and degree, the most natural plan would be to sort them
both out, and then design a school system expressly in order to fit one
to the other. At present there was no fixed purpose, but a perpetual
riot of changes, resulting in distraction of mind, discontinuity of
purpose, and increase of cost, while happiness decayed because desires
grew faster than possessions or the sense of achievement. The only
really scientific basis for a national system of education would be a
full knowledge of the family history of each child. With more perfect
classification of family talent the need of scholarships of
transplantation would become less, for each of them was the confession
of an initial error in placing the child. Then there would be more money
to be spared for industrial research, travelling and art studentships,
and other aids to those who had the rare gift of original thought"
(_British Medical Journal_, November 18, 1911).
[153] I should add that there is one obstacle, viz. expense. When the
present chapter was first published in its preliminary form as an
article in the _Nineteenth Century and After_ (May, 1906), Galton,
always alive to everything bearing on the study of Eugenics, wrote to me
that he had been impressed by the generally sympathetic reception my
paper had received, and that he felt encouraged to consider whether it
was possible to begin giving such certificates at once. He asked for my
views, among others, as to the ground which should be covered by such
certificates. The programme I set forth was somewhat extensive, as I
considered that the applicant must not only bring evidence of a sound
ancestry, but also submit to anthropological, psychological, and medical
examination. Galton eventually came to the conclusion that the expenses
involved by the scheme rendered it for the present impracticable. My
opinion was, and is, that though the charge for such a certificate might
in the first place be prohibitive for most people, a few persons might
find it desirable to seek, and advantageous to possess, such
certificates, and that it is worth while at all events to make a
beginning.
[154] Mannhardt, _Wald-und Feldkulte_, 1875, Vol. I, pp. 422 _et seq._ I
have discussed seasonal erotic festivals in a study of "The Phenomena of
Sexual Periodicity," _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, Vol. I.
[155] Thus we read in a small popular periodical: "I am prepared to back
human nature against all the cranks in Christendom. Human nature will
endure a faddist so long as he does not interfere with things it prizes.
One of these things is the right to select its partner for life. If a
man loves a girl he is not going to give her up because she happens to
have an aunt in a lunatic asylum or an uncle who has epileptic fits,"
etc. In the same way it may be said that a man will allow nothing to
interfere with his right to eat such food as he chooses, and is not
going to give up a dish he likes because it happens to be peppered with
arsenic. It may be so, let us grant, among savages. The growth of
civilization lies in ever-extended self-control guided by foresight.
[156] I have summarized some of the evidence on these points, especially
that showing that sexual attraction tends to be towards like persons and
not, as was formerly supposed, towards the unlike, in _Studies in the
Psychology of Sex_, Vol. IV, "Sexual Selection in Man."
[157] In other words, the process of tumescence is gradual and complex.
See Havelock Ellis, _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, Vol. III, "The
Analysis of the Sexual Impulse."
[158] As Roswell Johnson remarks ("The Evolution of Man and its Control,"
_Popular Science Monthly_, January, 1910): "While it is undeniable that
love when once established defies rational considerations, yet we must
remark that sexual selection proceeds usually through two stages, the
first being one of mere mutual attraction and interest. It is in this
stage that the will and reason are operative, and here alone that any
considerable elevation of standard may be effective."
[159] Galton looked upon eugenics as fitted to become a factor in religion
(_Essays in Eugenics_, p. 68). It may, however, be questioned whether
this consummation is either probable or desirable. The same religious
claim has been made for socialism. But, as Dr. Eden Paul remarks in a
recent pamphlet on _Socialism and Eugenics_, "Whereas both Socialism and
Eugenics are concerned solely with the application of the knowledge
gained by experience to the amelioration of the human lot, it seems
preferable to dispense with religious terminology, and to regard the two
doctrines as complementary parts of the great modern movement known by
the name of Humanism." Personally, I do not consider that either
Socialism or Eugenics can be regarded as coming within the legitimate
sphere of religion, which I have elsewhere attempted to define
(Conclusion to _The New Spirit_).
[160] J. Grasset, in Dr. A. Marie's _Traité International de Psychologie
Pathologique_, 1910, Vol. I, p. 25. Grasset proceeds to discuss the
principles which must guide the physician in such consultations.
[161] This has been clearly realized by the German Society of Eugenics or
"Racial Hygiene," as it is usually termed in Germany (Internationale
Gesellschaft für Rassen-Hygiene), founded by Dr. Alfred Ploetz, with the
co-operation of many distinguished physicians and men of science, "to
further the theory and practice of racial hygiene." It is a chief aim of
this Society to encourage the registration by the members of the
biological and other physical and psychic characteristics of themselves
and their families, in order to obtain a body of data on which
conclusions may eventually be based; the members undertake not to enter
on a marriage except they are assured by medical investigation of both
parties that the union is not likely to cause disaster to either partner
or to the offspring. The Society also admits associates who only occupy
themselves with the scientific aspects of its work and with propaganda.
In England the Eugenics Education Society (with its organ the _Eugenics
Review_) has done much to stimulate an intelligent interest in
eugenics.
[162] How influential public opinion may be in the selection of mates is
indicated by the influence it already exerts--in less than a century--in
the limitation of offspring. This is well marked in some parts of
France. Thus, concerning a rural district near the Garonne, Dr. Belbèze,
who knows it thoroughly, writes (_La Neurasthénie Rurale_, 1911):
"Public opinion does not at present approve of multiple procreation.
Large families, there can be no doubt, are treated with contempt.
Couples who produce a numerous progeny are looked on, with a wink, as
'maladroits,' which in this region is perhaps the supreme term of
abuse.... Public opinion is all-powerful, and alone suffices to produce
restraint, when foresight is not adequate for this purpose."
VII
RELIGION AND THE CHILD
Religious Education in Relation to Social Hygiene and to
Psychology--The Psychology of the Child--The Contents of Children's
Minds--The Imagination of Children--How far may Religion be
assimilated by Children?--Unfortunate Results of Early Religious
Instruction--Puberty the Age for Religious Education--Religion as
an Initiation into a Mystery--Initiation among Savages--The
Christian Sacraments--The Modern Tendency as regards Religious
Instruction--Its Advantages--Children and Fairy Tales--The Bible of
Childhood--Moral Training.
It is a fact as strange as it is unfortunate that the much-debated
question of the religious education of children is almost exclusively
considered from the points of view of the sectarian and the secularist.
In a discussion of this question we are almost certain to be invited to
take part in an unedifying wrangle between Church and Chapel, between
religion and secularism. That is the strange part of it, that it should
seem impossible to get away from this sectarian dispute as to the
abstract claims of varying religious bodies. The unfortunate part of it
is that in this quarrel the interests of the community, the interests of
the child, even the interests of religion are alike disregarded.
If we really desire to reach a sound conclusion on a matter which is
unquestionably of great moment, both for the child and for the community
of which he will one day become a citizen, we must resolutely put into
the background, as of secondary importance, the cries of contending
sects, religious or irreligious. The first place here belongs to the
psychologist, who is building up the already extensive edifice of
knowledge concerning the real nature of the child and the contents and
growth of the youthful mind, and to the practical teacher who is in
touch with that knowledge and can bring it to the test of actual
experience. Before considering what drugs are to be administered we must
consider the nature of the organism they are to be thrust into.
The mind of the child is at once logical and extravagant, matter-of-fact
and poetic or rather mytho-poeic. This combination of apparent
opposites, though it often seems almost incomprehensible to the adult,
is the inevitable outcome of the fact that the child's dawning
intelligence is working, as it were, in a vacuum. In other words, the
child has not acquired the two endowments which chiefly give character
to the whole body of the adult's beliefs and feelings. He is without the
pubertal expansion which fills out the mind with new personal and
altruistic impulses and transforms it with emotion that is often
dazzling and sometimes distorting; and he has not yet absorbed, or even
gained the power of absorbing, all those beliefs, opinions, and mental
attitudes which the race has slowly acquired and transmitted as the
traditional outcome of its experiences.
The intellectual processes of children, the attitude and contents of the
child's mind, have been explored during recent years with a care and
detail that have never been brought to that study before. This is not a
matter of which the adult can be said to possess any instinctive or
matter-of-course knowledge. Adults usually have a strange aptitude to
forget entirely the facts of their lives as children, and children are
usually, like peoples of primitive race, very cautious in the deliberate
communication of their mental operations, their emotions, and their
ideas. That is to say that the child is equally without the internally
acquired complex emotional nature which has its kernel in the sexual
impulse, and without the externally acquired mental equipment which may
be summed up in the word tradition. But he possesses the vivid
activities founded on the exercise of his senses and appetites, and he
is able to reason with a relentless severity from which the
traditionalized and complexly emotional adult shrinks back with horror.
The child creates the world for himself, and he creates it in his own
image and the images of the persons he is familiar with. Nothing is
sacred to him, and he pushes to the most daring extremities--as it seems
to the adult--the arguments derived from his own personal experiences.
He is unable to see any distinction between the natural and the
supernatural, and he is justified in this conviction because, as a
matter of fact, he himself lives in what for most adults would be a
supernatural atmosphere; most children see visions with closed and
sometimes with open eyes;[163] they are not infrequently subject to
colour-hearing and other synæsthetic sensations; and they occasionally
hear hallucinatory voices. It is possible, indeed, that this is the case
with all children in some slight degree, although the faculty dies out
early and is easily forgotten because its extraordinary character was
never recognized.
Of 48 Boston children, says Stanley Hall,[164] 20 believed the sun, moon,
and stars to live, 16 thought flowers could feel, and 15 that dolls
would feel pain if burnt. The sky was found the chief field in which the
children exercise their philosophic minds. About three-quarters of them
thought the world a plain with the sky like a bowl turned over it,
sometimes believing that it was of such thin texture that one could
easily break through, though so large that much floor-sweeping was
necessary in Heaven. The sun may enter the ground when it sets, but half
the children thought that at night it rolls or flies away, or is blown
or walks, or God pulls it higher up out of sight, taking it up into
Heaven, according to some putting it to bed, and even taking off its
clothes and putting them on again in the morning, or again, it is
believed to lie under the trees at night and the angels mind it. God, of
whom the children always hear so much, plays a very large part in these
conceptions, and is made directly responsible for all cosmic phenomena.
Thus thunder to these American children was God groaning or kicking or
rolling barrels about, or turning a big handle, or grinding snow, or
breaking something, or rattling a big hammer; while the lightning is due
to God putting his finger out, or turning the gas on quick, or striking
matches, or setting paper on fire. According to Boston children, God is
a big, perhaps a blue, man, to be seen in the sky, on the clouds, in
church, or even in the streets. They declare that God comes to see them
sometimes, and they have seen him enter the gate. He makes lamps,
babies, dogs, trees, money, etc., and the angels work for him. He looks
like a priest, or a teacher, or papa, and the children like to look at
him; a few would themselves like to be God. His house in the sky may be
made of stone or brick; birds, children, and Santa Claus live with God.
Birds and beasts, their food and their furniture, as Burnham points out,
all talk to children; when the dew is on the grass "the grass is
crying," the stars are candles or lamps, perhaps cinders from God's
stove, butterflies are flying pansies, icicles are Christmas candy.
Children have imaginary play-brothers and sisters and friends, with whom
they talk. Sometimes God talks with them. Even the prosiest things are
vivified; the tracks of dirty feet on the floor are flowers; a creaking
chair talks; the shoemaker's nails are children whom he is driving to
school; a pedlar is Santa Claus.
Miss Miriam Levy once investigated the opinions of 560 children, boys
and girls, between the ages of 4 and 14, as to how the man in the moon
got there. Only 5 were unable to offer a serious explanation; 48 thought
there was no man there at all; 50 offered a scientific explanation of
the phenomena; but all the rest, the great majority, presented
imaginative solutions which could be grouped into seventeen different
classes.
Such facts as these--which can easily be multiplied and are indeed
familiar to all, though their significance is not usually
realized--indicate the special tendencies of the child in the religious
sphere. He is unable to follow the distinctions which the adult is
pleased to make between "real," "spiritual" and "imaginary" beings. To
him such distinctions do not exist. He may, if he so pleases, adopt the
names or such characteristics as he chooses, of the beings he is told
about, but he puts them into his own world, on a footing of more or less
equality, and he decides himself what their fate is to be. The adult's
supreme beings by no means always survive in the struggle for existence
which takes place in the child's imaginative world. It was found among
many thousand children entering the city schools of Berlin that Red
Riding Hood was better known than God, and Cinderella than Christ. That
is the result of the child's freedom from the burden of tradition.
Yet at the same time the opposite though allied peculiarity of
childhood--the absence of the emotional developments of puberty which
deepen and often cloud the mind a few years later--is also making itself
felt. Extravagant as his beliefs may appear, the child is an
uncompromising rationalist and realist. His supposed imaginativeness is
indeed merely the result of his logical insistence that all the new
phenomena presented to him shall be thought of in terms of himself and
his own environment. His wildest notions are based on precise, concrete,
and personal facts of his own experience. That is why he is so keen a
questioner of grown-up people's ideas, and a critic who may sometimes be
as dangerous and destructive as Bishop Colenso's Zulus. Most children
before the age of thirteen, as Earl Barnes states, are inquirers, if not
sceptics.
If we clearly realize these characteristics of the childish mind, we
cannot fail to understand the impression made on it by religious
instruction. The statements and stories that are repeated to him are
easily accepted by the child in so far, and in so far only, as they
answer to his needs; and when accepted they are assimilated, which means
that they are compelled to obey the laws of his own mental world. In so
far as the statements and stories presented to him are not acceptable or
cannot be assimilated, it happens either that they pass by him
unnoticed, or else that he subjects them to a cold and matter-of-fact
logic which exerts a dissolving influence upon them.
Now a few of the ideas of religion are assimilable by the child, and
notably the idea of a God as the direct agent in cosmic phenomena; some
of the childish notions I have quoted illustrate the facility with which
the child adopts this idea. He adopts, that is, what may be called the
hard precise skeleton of the idea, and imagines a colossal magician, of
anthropomorphic (if not paidomorphic) nature, whose operations are
curious, though they altogether fail to arouse any mysterious reverence
or awe for the agent. Even this is not very satisfactory, and Stanley
Hall, in the spirit of Froebel, considers that the best result is
attained when the child knows no God but his own mother.[165] But for the
most part the ideas of religion cannot be accepted or assimilated by
children at all; they were not made by children or for children, but
represent the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of men, and sometimes
even of very exceptional and abnormal men. "The child," it has been
said, "no doubt has the psychical elements out of which the religious
experience is evolved, just as the seed has the promise of the fruit
which will come in the fullness of time. But to say, therefore, that the
average child is religious, or capable of receiving the usual advanced
religious instruction, is equivalent to saying that the seed is the
fruit or capable of being converted into fruit before the fullness of
time."[166] The child who grows devout and becomes anxious about the state
of his soul is a morbid and unwholesome child; if he prefers praying for
the conversion of his play-fellows to joining them in their games he is
not so much an example of piety as a pathological case whose future must
be viewed with anxiety; and to preach religious duties to children is
exactly the same, it has been well said, as to exhort them to imagine
themselves married people and to inculcate on them the duties of that
relation. Fortunately the normal child is usually able to resist these
influences. It is the healthy child's impulse either to let them fall
with indifference or to apply to them the instrument of his unmerciful
logic.
Naturally, the adult, in self-defence, is compelled to react against
this indifferent or aggressive attitude of the child. He may be no match
for the child in logic, and even unspeakably shocked by his daring
inquiries, like an amiable old clergyman I knew when a Public School
teacher in Australia; he went to a school to give Bible lessons, and was
one day explaining how King David was a man after God's own heart, when
a small voice was heard making inquiries about Uriah's wife; the small
boy was hushed down by the shocked clergyman, and the cause of religion
was not furthered in that school. But the adult knows that he has on his
side tradition which has not yet been acquired by the child, and the
inner emotional expansion which still remains unliberated in the child.
The adult, therefore, fortified by this superiority, feels justified in
falling back on the weapon of authority: "You may not _want_ to believe
this and to learn it, but you've _got_ to."
It is in this way that the adult wins the battle of religious education.
In the deeper and more far-seeing sense he has lost it. Religion has
become, not a charming privilege, but a lesson, a lesson about
unbelievable things, a meaningless task to be learnt by heart, a
drudgery. It may be said that even if that is so, religious lessons
merely share the inevitable fate of all subjects which become school
tasks. But that is not the case. Every other subject which is likely to
become a school task is apt to become intelligible and attractive to
some considerable section of the scholars because it is within the range
of childish intelligence. But, for the two very definite reasons I have
pointed out, this is only to an extremely limited degree true as regards
the subject of religion, because the young organism is an instrument not
as yet fitted with the notes which religion is most apt to strike.
Of all the school subjects religion thus tends to be the least
attractive. Lobsien, at Kiel, found a few years since, in the course of
a psychological investigation, that when five hundred children (boys and
girls in equal numbers), between the ages of nine and fourteen, were
asked which was their favourite lesson hour, only twelve (ten girls and
two boys) named the religious lesson.[167] In other words, nearly 98 per
cent children (and nearly all the boys) find that religion is either an
indifferent or a repugnant subject. I have no reports at hand as regards
English children, but there is little reason to suppose that the result
would be widely different.[168] Here and there a specially skilful
teacher might bring about a result more favourable to religious
teaching, but that could only be done by depriving the subject of its
most characteristic elements.
This is, however, not by any means the whole of the mischief which, from
the religious point of view, is thus perpetrated. It might, on _a
priori_ grounds, be plausibly argued that even if there is among healthy
young children a certain amount of indifference or even repugnance to
religious instruction, that is of very little consequence: they cannot
be too early grounded in the principles of the faith they will later be
called on to profess; and however incapable they may now be of
understanding the teaching that is being inculcated in the school, they
will realize its importance when their knowledge and experience
increase. But however plausible this may seem, practically it is not
what usually happens. The usual effect of constantly imparting to
children an instruction they are not yet ready to receive is to deaden
their sensibilities to the whole subject of religion.[169] The premature
familiarity with religious influences--putting aside the rare cases
where it leads to a morbid pre-occupation with religion--induces a
reaction of routine which becomes so habitual that it successfully
withstands the later influences which on more virgin soil would have
evoked vigorous and living response. So far from preparing the way for a
more genuine development of religious impulse later on, this precocious
scriptural instruction is just adequate to act as an inoculation against
deeper and more serious religious interests. The commonplace child in
later life accepts the religion it has been inured to so early as part
of the conventional routine of life. The more vigorous and original
child for the same reason shakes it off, perhaps for ever.
Luther, feeling the need to gain converts to Protestantism as early as
possible, was a strong advocate for the religious training of children,
and has doubtless had much influence in this matter on the Protestant
churches. "The study of religion, of the Bible and the Catechism," says
Fiedler, "of course comes first and foremost in his scheme of
instruction." He was also quite prepared to adapt it to the childish
mind. "Let children be taught," he writes, "that our dear Lord sits in
Heaven on a golden throne, that He has a long grey beard and a crown of
gold." But Luther quite failed to realize the inevitable psychological
reaction in later life against such fairy-tales.
At a later date, Rousseau, who, like Luther, was on the side of
religion, realized, as Luther failed to realize, the disastrous results
of attempting to teach it to children. In _La Nouvelle Héloïse_,
Saint-Preux writes that Julie had explained to him how she sought to
surround her children with good influences without forcing any religious
instruction on them: "As to the Catechism, they don't so much as know
what it is." "What! Julie, your children don't learn their Catechism?"
"No, my friend, my children don't learn their Catechism." "So pious a
mother!" I exclaimed; "I can't understand. And why don't your children
learn their Catechism?" "In order that they may one day believe it. I
wish to make Christians of them."[170]
Since Rousseau's day this may be said to be the general attitude of
nearly all thinkers who have given attention to the question, even
though they may not have viewed it psychologically. It is an attitude by
no means confined to those who are anxious that children should grow up
to be genuine Christians, but is common to all who consider that the
main point is that children should grow up to be, at all events, genuine
men and women. "I do not think," writes John Stuart Mill, in 1868,
"there should be any _authoritative_ teaching at all on such subjects. I
think parents ought to point out to their children, when the children
begin to question them or to make observations of their own, the various
opinions on such subjects, and what the parents themselves think the
most powerful reasons for and against. Then, if the parents show a
strong feeling of the importance of truth, and also of the difficulty of
attaining it, it seems to me that young people's minds will be
sufficiently prepared to regard popular opinion or the opinion of those
about them with respectful tolerance, and may be safely left to form
definite conclusions in the course of mature life."[171]
There are few among us who have not suffered from too early familiarity
with the Bible and the conceptions of religion. Even for a man of really
strong and independent intellect it may be many years before the
precociously dulled feelings become fresh again, before the fetters of
routine fall off, and he is enabled at last to approach the Bible with
fresh receptivity and to realize, for the first time in his life, the
treasures of art and beauty and divine wisdom it contains. But for most
that moment never comes round. For the majority the religious education
of the school as effectually seals the Bible for life as the classical
education of the college seals the great authors of Greece and Rome for
life; no man opens his school books again when he has once left school.
Those who read Greek and Latin for love have not usually come out of
universities, and there is surely a certain significance in the fact
that the children of one's secularist friends are so often found to
become devout church-goers, while, according to the frequent
observation, devout parents often have most irreligious offspring, just
as the bad boys at school and college are frequently sons of the clergy.
At puberty and during adolescence everything begins to be changed. The
change, it is important to remember, is a natural change, and tends to
come about spontaneously; "where no set forms have been urged, the
religious emotion," as Lancaster puts it, "comes forth as naturally as
the sun rises."[172] That period, really and psychologically, marks a "new
birth." Emotions which are of fundamental importance, not only for the
individual's personal life but for his social and even cosmic
relationships, are for the first time born. Not only is the child's body
remoulded in the form of a man or a woman, but the child-soul becomes a
man-soul or a woman-soul, and nothing can possibly be as it has been
before. The daringly sceptical logician has gone, and so has the
imaginative dreamer for whom the world was the automatic magnifying
mirror of his own childish form and environment. It has been revealed to
him that there are independent personal and impersonal forces outside
himself, forces with which he may come into a conscious and
fascinatingly exciting relationship. It is a revelation of supreme
importance, and with it comes not only the complexly emotional and
intellectual realization of personality, but the aptitude to enter into
and assimilate the traditions of the race.
It cannot be too strongly emphasized that this is the moment, and the
earliest moment, when it becomes desirable to initiate the boy or girl
into the mysteries of religion. That it is the best moment is indicated
by the well-recognized fact that the immediately post-pubertal period of
adolescence is the period during which, even spontaneously, the most
marked religious phenomena tend to occur.[173] Stanley Hall seems to think
that twelve is the age at which the cultivation of the religious
consciousness may begin; "the age, signalized by the ancient Greeks as
that at which the study of what was comprehensively called music should
begin, the age at which Roman guardianship ended, at which boys are
confirmed in the modern Greek, Catholic, Lutheran and Episcopal
Churches, and at which the Child Jesus entered the Temple, is as early
as any child ought consciously to go about his Heavenly Father's
business."[174] But I doubt whether we can fix the age definitely by
years, nor is it indeed quite accurate to assert that so early an age as
twelve is generally accepted as the age of initiation; the Anglican
Church, for example, usually confirms at the age of fifteen. It is not
age with which we ought to be concerned, but a biological epoch of
psychic evolution. It is unwise to insist on any particular age, because
development takes place within a considerably wide limit of years.
I have spoken of the introduction to religion at puberty as the
initiation into a mystery. The phrase was deliberately chosen, for it
seems to me to be not a metaphor, but the expression of a truth which
has always been understood whenever religion has been a reality and not
a mere convention. Among savages in nearly all parts of the world the
boy or girl at puberty is initiated into the mystery of manhood or of
womanhood, into the duties and the privileges of the adult members of
the tribe. The youth is taken into a solitary place, for a month or
more, he is made to suffer pain and hardship, to learn self-restraint,
he is taught the lore of the tribe as well as the elementary rules of
morality and justice; he is shown the secret things of the tribe and
their meaning and significance, which no stranger may know. He is, in
short, enabled to find his soul, and he emerges from this discipline a
trained and responsible member of his tribe. The girl receives a
corresponding training, suited to her sex, also in solitude, at the
hands of the older women. A clear and full description of a typical
savage initiation into manhood at puberty is presented by Dr. Haddon in
the fifth volume of the _Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological
Expedition to Torres Straits_, and Dr. Haddon makes the comment: "It is
not easy to conceive of more effectual means for a rapid training."
The ideas of remote savages concerning the proper manner of initiating
youth in the religious and other mysteries of life may seem of little
personal assistance to superiorly civilized people like ourselves. But
let us turn, therefore, to the Greeks. They also had preserved the idea
and the practice of initiation into sacred mysteries, though in a
somewhat modified form because religion had ceased to be so intimately
blended with all the activities of life. The Eleusinian and other
mysteries were initiations into sacred knowledge and insight which, as
is now recognized, involved no revelation of obscure secrets, but were
mysteries in the sense that all intimate experiences of the soul, the
experiences of love quite as much as those of religion, are mysteries,
not to be lightly or publicly spoken of. In that feeling the Greek was
at one with the Papuan, and it is interesting to observe that the
procedure of initiation into the Greek mysteries, as described by Theon
of Smyrna and other writers, followed the same course as the pubertal
initiations of savages; there was the same preliminary purification by
water, the same element of doctrinal teaching, the same ceremonial and
symbolic rubbing with sand or charcoal or clay, the same conclusion in a
joyous feast, even the same custom of wearing wreaths.
In how far the Christian sacraments were consciously moulded after the
model of the Greek mysteries is still a disputed point;[175] but the first
Christians were seeking the same spiritual initiation, and they
necessarily adopted, consciously or unconsciously, methods of procedure
which, in essentials, were fundamentally the same as those they were
already familiar with. The early Christian Church adopted the rite of
Baptism not merely as a symbol of initiation, but as an actual component
part of a process of initiation; the purifying ceremony was preceded by
long preparation, and when at last completed the baptized were sometimes
crowned with garlands. When at a later period in the history of the
Church the physical part of the initiation was divorced from the
spiritual part, and baptism was performed in infancy and confirmation at
puberty, a fatal mistake was made, and each part of the rite largely
lost its real significance.
But it still remains true that Christianity embodied in its practical
system the ancient custom of initiating the young at puberty, and that
the custom exists in an attenuated form in all the more ancient
Christian Churches. The rite of Confirmation has, however, been
devitalized, and its immense significance has been almost wholly lost.
Instead of being regarded as a real initiation into the privileges and
the responsibilities of a religious communion, of an active fellowship
for the realization of a divine life on earth, it has become a mere
mechanical corollary of the precedent rite of baptism, a formal
condition of participation in the Sacrament of Holy Communion. The
splendid and many-sided discipline by which the child of the savage was
initiated into the secrets of his own emotional nature and the sacred
tradition of his people has been degraded into the learning of a
catechism and a few hours' perfunctory instruction in the schoolroom or
in the parlour of the curate's lodgings. The vital kernel of the rite is
decayed and only the dead shell is left, while some of the Christian
Churches have lost even the shell.
It is extremely probable that in no remote future the State in England
will reject as insoluble the problem of imparting religious instruction
to the young in its schools, in accordance with a movement of opinion
which is taking place in all civilized countries.[176] The support which
the Secular Education League has found in the most various quarters is
without doubt a fact of impressive significance.[177] It is well known
also that the working classes--the people chiefly concerned in the
matter--are distinctly opposed to religious teaching in State schools.
There can be little doubt that before many years have passed, in England
as elsewhere, the Churches will have to face the question of the best
methods of themselves undertaking that task of religious training which
they have sought to foist upon the State. If they are to fulfil this
duty in a wise and effectual manner they must follow the guidance of
biological psychology at the point where it is at one with the teaching
of their own most ancient traditions, and develop the merely formal rite
of confirmation into a true initiation of the new-born soul at puberty
into the deepest secrets of life and the highest mysteries of religion.
It must, of course, be remembered that, so far as England is concerned,
we live in an empire in which there are 337 millions of people who are
not even nominally Christians,[178] and that even among the comparatively
small proportion (about 14 per cent) who call themselves "Christians," a
very large proportion are practically Secularists, and a considerable
number avowedly so. If, however, we assume the Secularist's position,
the considerations here brought forward still retain their validity. In
the first place, the undoubtedly frequent hostility of the Freethinker
to Christianity is not so much directed against vital religion as
against a dead Church. The Freethinker is prepared to respect the
Christian who by free choice and the exercise of thought has attained
the position of a Christian, but he resents the so-called Christian who
is merely in the Church because he finds himself there, without any
effort of his will or his intelligence. The convinced secularist feels
respect for the sincere Christian, even though it may only be in the
sense that the real saint feels tenderness for the hopeless sinner. And
in the second place, as I have sought to point out, the facts we are
here concerned with are far too fundamental to concern the Christian
alone. They equally concern the secularist, who also is called upon to
satisfy the spiritual hunger of the adolescent youth, to furnish him
with a discipline for his entry into life, and a satisfying vision of
the universe. And if secularists have not always grasped this necessity,
we may perhaps find therein one main reason why secularism has not met
with so enormous and enthusiastic a reception as the languor and
formalism of the churches seemed to render possible.
If the view here set forth is sound,--a view more and more widely held
by educationists and by psychologists trained in biology,--the first
twelve years must be left untouched by all conceptions of life and the
world which transcend immediate experience, for the child whose
spiritual virginity has been prematurely tainted will never be able to
awake afresh to the full significance of those conceptions when the age
of religion at last arrives. But are we, it may be asked, to leave the
child's restless, inquisitive, imaginative brain without any food during
all those early years? By no means. Even admitting that, as it has been
said, at the early stage religious training is the supreme art of
standing out of Nature's way, it is still not hard to find what, in this
matter, the way of Nature is. The life of the individual recapitulates
the life of the race, and there can be no better imaginative food for
the child than that which was found good in the childhood of the race.
The child who is deprived of fairy tales invents them for himself,--for
he must have them for the needs of his psychic growth just as there is
reason to believe he must have sugar for his metabolic growth,--but he
usually invents them badly.[179] The savage sees the world almost exactly
as the civilized child sees it, as the magnified image of himself and
his own environment; but he sees it with an added poetic charm, a
delightful and accomplished inventiveness which the child is incapable
of. The myths and legends of primitive peoples--for instance, those of
the British Columbian Indians, so carefully reproduced by Boas in German
and Hill Tout in English--are one in their precision and their
extravagance with the stories of children, but with a finer
inventiveness. It was, I believe, many years ago pointed out by Ziller
that fairy-tales ought to play a very important part in the education of
young children, and since then B. Hartmann, Stanley Hall and many others
of the most conspicuous educational authorities have emphasized the same
point. Fairy tales are but the final and transformed versions of
primitive myths, creative legends, stories of old gods. In purer and
less transformed versions the myths and legends of primitive peoples are
often scarcely less adapted to the child's mind. Julia Gayley argues
that the legends of early Greek civilization, the most perfect of all
dreams, should above all be revealed to children; the early traditions
of the East and of America yield material that is scarcely less fitted
for the child's imaginative uses. Portions of the Bible, especially of
Genesis, are in the strict sense fairy tales, that is legends of early
gods and their deeds which have become stories. In the opinion of many
these portions of the Bible may suitably be given to children (though it
is curious to observe that a Welsh Education Committee a few years ago
prohibited the reading in schools of precisely the most legendary part
of Genesis); but it must always be remembered, from the Christian point
of view, that nothing should be given at this early age which is to be
regarded as essential at a later age, for the youth turns against the
tales of his childhood as he turns against its milk-foods. Some day,
perhaps, it may be thought worth while to compile a Bible for childhood,
not a mere miscellaneous assortment of stories, but a collection of
books as various in origin and nature as are the books of the
Hebraic-Christian Bible, so that every kind of child in all his moods
and stages of growth might here find fit pasture. Children would not
then be left wholly to the mercy of the thin and frothy literature which
the contemporary press pours upon them so copiously; they would possess
at least one great and essential book which, however fantastic and
extravagant it might often be, would yet have sprung from the deepest
instincts of the primitive soul, and furnish answers to the most
insistent demands of primitive hearts. Such a book, even when finally
dropped from the youth's or girl's hands, would still leave its vague
perfume behind.
It may be pointed out, finally, that the fact that it is impossible to
teach children even the elements of adult religion and philosophy, as
well as unwise to attempt it, by no means proves that all serious
teaching is impossible in childhood. On the imaginative and spiritual
side, it is true, the child is re-born and transformed during
adolescence, but on the practical and concrete side his life and thought
are for the most part but the regular and orderly development of the
habits he has already acquired. The elements of ethics on the one hand,
as well as of natural science on the other, may alike be taught to
children, and indeed they become a necessary part of early education, if
the imaginative side of training is to be duly balanced and
complemented. The child as much as the adult can be taught, and is
indeed apt to learn, the meaning and value of truth and honesty, of
justice and pity, of kindness and courtesy; we have wrangled and worried
for so long concerning the teaching of religion in schools that we have
failed altogether to realize that these fundamental notions of morality
are a far more essential part of school training. It must, however,
always be remembered that they cannot be adequately treated merely as an
isolated subject of instruction, and possibly ought not to be so treated
at all. As Harriet Finlay-Johnson wisely says in her _Dramatic Method of
Instruction_: "It is impossible to shut away moral teaching into a
compartment of the mind. It should be firmly and openly diffused
throughout the thoughts, to 'leaven the whole of the lump.'" She adds
the fruitful suggestion: "There is real need for some lessons in which
the emotions shall not be ignored. Nature study, properly treated, can
touch both senses and emotions."[180]
The child is indeed quite apt to acquire a precise knowledge of the
natural objects around him, of flowers and plants and to some extent of
animals, objects which to the savage also are of absorbing interest. In
this way, under wise guidance, the caprices of his imagination may be
indirectly restrained and the lessons of life taught, while at the same
time he is thus being directly prepared for the serious studies which
must occupy so much of his later youth.
The child, we thus have to realize, is, from the educational point of
view of social hygiene, a being of dual nature, who needs ministering to
on both sides. On the one hand he demands the key to an imaginative
paradise which one day he must leave, bearing away with him, at the
best, only a dim and haunting memory of its beauty. On the other hand he
possesses eager aptitudes on which may be built up concrete knowledge
and the sense of human relationships, to serve as a firm foundation when
the period of adolescent development and discipline at length arrives.
FOOTNOTES:
[163] De Quincey in his _Confessions of an Opium Eater_ referred to the
power that many, perhaps most, children possess of seeing visions in the
dark. The phenomenon has been carefully studied by G.L. Partridge
(_Pedagogical Seminary_, April, 1898) in over 800 children. He found
that 58.5 of them aged between thirteen and sixteen could see visions or
images at night with closed eyes before falling asleep; of those aged
six the proportion was higher. There seemed to be a maximum at the age
of ten, and probably another maximum at a much earlier age. Among adults
this tendency is rudimentary, and only found in a marked form in
neurasthenic subjects or at moments of nervous exhaustion. See also
Havelock Ellis, _The World of Dreams_, chap. II.
[164] G. Stanley Hall, "The Contents of Children's Minds on Entering
School," _Pedagogical Seminary_, June, 1891.
[165] "The mother's face and voice are the first conscious objects as the
infant soul unfolds, and she soon comes to stand in the very place of
God to her child. All the religion of which the child is capable during
this by no means brief stage of its development consists of these
sentiments--gratitude, trust, dependence, love, etc.--now felt only for
her, which are later directed towards God. The less these are now
cultivated towards the mother, who is now their only fitting if not
their only possible object, the more feebly they will later be felt
towards God. This, too, adds greatly to the sacredness of the
responsibilities of motherhood." (G. Stanley Hall, _Pedagogical
Seminary_, June, 1891, p. 199).
[166] J. Morse, _American Journal of Religious Psychology_, 1911, p. 247.
[167] Lobsien, "Kinderideale," _Zeitschrift für Päd. Psychologie_, 1903.
[168] Mr. Edmond Holmes, formerly Chief Inspector of Elementary Education
in England, has an instructive remark bearing on this point in his
suggestive book, _What Is and What Might be_ (1911, p. 88): "The first
forty minutes of the morning session are given in almost every
elementary school to what is called _Religious Instruction_. This goes
on, morning after morning, and week after week. The fact that the
English parent, who must himself have attended from 1500 to 2000
Scripture lessons in his schooldays, is not under any circumstance to be
trusted to give religious instruction to his own children, shows that
those who control the religious education of the youthful 'masses' have
but little confidence in the effects of their system on the religious
life and faith of the English people." Miss Harriet Finlay-Johnson, a
highly original and successful elementary school teacher, speaks (_The
Dramatic Method of Teaching_, 1911, p. 170) with equal disapproval of
the notion that any moral value attaches to the ordinary school
examinations in "Scripture."
[169] If it were not so, England, after sixty years of National Schools,
ought to be a devout nation of good Church people. Most of the criminals
and outcasts have been taught in Church Schools. A clergyman, who points
this out to me, adds: "I am heartily thankful that religion was never
forced on me as a child. I do not think I had any religion, in the
ethical sense, until puberty, or any conscious realization of religion,
indeed, until nineteen." "The boy," remarks Holmes (_op. cit._, p. 100),
"who, having attended two thousand Scripture lessons, says to himself
when he leaves school: 'If this is religion I will have no more of it,'
is acting in obedience to a healthy instinct. He is to be honoured
rather than blamed for having realized at last that the chaff on which
he has so long been fed is not the life-giving grain which, unknown to
himself, his inmost soul demands."
[170] _La Nouvelle Héloïse_, Part V, Letter 3. In more recent times Ellen
Key remarks in a suggestive chapter on "Religions Education" in her
_Century of the Child_: "Nothing better shows how deeply rooted religion
is in human nature than the fact that 'religious education' has not been
able to tear it out."
[171] J.S. Mill, _Letters_, Vol. II, p. 135.
[172] Lancaster found ("The Psychology and Pedagogy of Adolescence,"
_Pedagogical Seminary_, July, 1897) that among 598 individuals of both
sexes in the United States, as many as 518 experienced new religious
emotions between the ages of 12 and 20, only 80 having no such emotions
at this period, so that more than 5 out of 6 have this experience; it is
really even more frequent, for it has no necessary tendency to fall into
conventional religious moulds.
[173] Professor Starbuck, in his _Psychology of Religion_, has well
brought together and clearly presented much of the evidence showing this
intimate association between adolescence and religious manifestations.
He finds (Chap. III) that in females there are two tidal waves of
religious awakening, one at about 13, the other at 16, with a less
significant period at 18; for males, after a wavelet at 12, the great
tidal wave is at 16, followed by another at 18 or 19. Ruediger's results
are fairly concordant ("The Period of Mental Reconstruction," _American
Journal of Psychology_, July, 1907); he finds that in women the average
age of conversion is 14, in men it is at 13 or 14, and again at 18.
[174] G. Stanley Hall, "The Moral and Religious Training of Children and
Adolescents," _Pedagogical Seminary_, June, 1891, p. 207. From the more
narrowly religious side the undesirability of attempting to teach
religion to children is well set forth by Florence Hayllar (_Independent
Review_, Oct., 1906). She considers that thirteen is quite early enough
to begin teaching children the lessons of the Gospels, for a child who
acted in accordance with the Gospels would be "aggravating," and would
generally be regarded as "an insufferable prig." Moreover, she points
out, it is dangerous to teach young children the Christian virtues of
charity, humility, and self-denial. It is far better that they should
first be taught the virtues of justice and courage and self-mastery, and
the more Christian virtues later. She also believes that in the case of
the clergy who are brought in contact with children a preliminary course
of child-study, with the necessary physiology and psychology, should be
compulsory.
[175] The varying opinions on this point have been fairly and clearly
presented by Cheetham in his Hulsean lectures on the _Mysteries Pagan
and Christian_.
[176] Thus at the first Congress of Italian Women held at Rome in 1908--a
very representative Congress, by no means made up of "feminists" or
anti-clericals, and marked by great moderation and good sense--a
resolution was passed against religious teaching in primary schools,
though a subsequent resolution declared by a very large majority in
favour of teaching the history of religions in secondary schools. These
resolutions caused much surprise at the time to those persons who still
cherish the superstition that in matters of religion women are blindly
prejudiced and unable to think for themselves.
[177] See e.g. an article by Halley Stewart, President of the Secular
Education League, on "The Policy of Secular Education," _Nineteenth
Century_, April, 1911.
[178] So far as numbers go, the dominant religion of the British Empire,
the religion of the majority, is Hinduism; Mohammedanism comes next.
[179] "Not long ago," says Dr. L. Guthrie (_Clinical Journal_, 7th
June, 1899), "I heard of a lady who, in her desire that her children
should learn nothing but what was true, banished fairy tales from her
nursery. But the children evolved from their own imagination fictions
which were so appalling that she was glad to divert them with
Jack-the-Giant-Killer."
[180] In his interesting study of comparative education (_The Making of
Citizens_, 1902, p. 194), Mr. R.E. Hughes, a school inspector, after
discussing the methods of settling the difficulties of religious
education in England, America, Germany, and France, reasonably
concludes: "The solution of the religious problem of the schools of
these four peoples lies in the future, but we believe it will be found
not to be beyond human ingenuity to devise a scheme of moral and ethical
training for little children which will be suitable. It is the moral
principles underlying all conduct which the school should teach. Indeed,
the school, to justify its existence, dare not neglect them. It will
teach them, not dogmatically or by precept, but by example, and by the
creation of a noble atmosphere around the child." Holmes also (_op.
cit._, p. 276) insists that the teaching of patriotism and citizenship
must be informal and indirect.
VIII
THE PROBLEM OF SEXUAL HYGIENE
The New Movement for giving Sexual Instruction to Children--The
Need of such a Movement--Contradictions involved by the Ancient
Policy of Silence--Errors of the New Policy--The Need of Teaching
the Teacher--The Need of Training the Parents--And of
Scientifically equipping the Physician--Sexual Hygiene and
Society--The far-reaching Effects of Sexual Hygiene.
It is impossible to doubt the vitality and the vigour of the new
movement of sexual hygiene, especially that branch of it concerned with
the instruction of children in the essential facts of life.[181] In the
eighteenth century the great educationist, Basedow, was almost alone
when, by practice and by precept, he sought to establish this branch of
instruction in schools.[182] A few years ago, when the German Dürer Bund
offered prizes for the best essays on the training of the young in
matters of sex, as many as five hundred papers were sent in.[183] We may
say that during the past ten years more has been done to influence
popular feeling on this question than during the whole of the preceding
century.
Whenever we witness a sudden impulse of zeal and enthusiasm to rush into
a new channel, however admirable the impulse may be, we must be prepared
for many risks and perhaps even a certain amount of damage. This is,
indeed, especially the case when we are concerned with a new activity in
the sphere of sex. The sexual relationships of life are so ancient and
so wide, their roots ramify so complexly and run so deep, that any
sudden disturbance in this soil, however well-intentioned, is certain to
have many results which were not anticipated by those responsible for
it. Any movement here runs the risk of defeating its own ends, or else,
in gaining them, to render impossible other ends which are of not less
value.
In this matter of sexual hygiene we are faced at the outset by the fact
that the very recognition of any such branch of knowledge as "sexual
hygiene" involves not merely a new departure, but the reversal of a
policy which has been accepted, almost without question, for centuries.
Among many primitive peoples, indeed, we know that the boy and girl at
puberty are initiated with solemnity, and even a not unwholesome
hardship, into the responsibilities of adult life, including those which
have reference to the duties and privileges of sex.[184] But in our own
traditions scarcely even a relic of any such custom is preserved. On the
contrary, we tacitly maintain a custom, and even a policy, of silent
obscurantism. Parents and teachers have considered it a duty to say
nothing and have felt justified in telling lies, or "fairy tales," in
order to maintain their attitude. The oncoming of puberty, with its
alarming manifestations, especially in the girl, has often left them
unmoved and still silent. They have taken care that our elementary
textbooks of anatomy and physiology, even when written by so independent
and fearless a pioneer as Huxley, should describe the human body
absolutely as though the organs and functions of reproduction had no
existence. The instinct was not thus suppressed; all the inevitable
stimulations which life furnishes to the youthful sexual impulse have
continued in operation.[185] Sexual activities were just as liable to
break out. They were all the more liable to break out, indeed, because
fostered by ignorance, often unconscious of themselves, and not held in
check by the restraints which knowledge and teaching might have
furnished. This, however, has seemed a matter of no concern to the
guardians of youth. They have congratulated themselves if they could
pilot the youths, and especially the maidens, under their guardianship
into the haven of matrimony not only in apparent chastity, but in
ignorance of nearly everything that marriage signifies and involves,
alike for the individual and the coming race.
This policy has been so firmly established that the theory of it has
never been clearly argued out. So far as it exists at all, it is a
theory that walks on two feet pointing opposite ways: sex things must
not be talked about because they are "dirty"; sex things must not be
talked about because they are "sacred." We must leave sex things alone,
they say, because God will see to it that they manifest themselves
aright and work for good; we must leave sex things alone, they also say,
because there is no department in life in which the activity of the
Devil is so specially exhibited. The very same person may be guilty of
this contradiction, when varying circumstances render it convenient.
Such a confusion is, indeed, a fate liable to befall all ancient and
deeply rooted _tabus_; we see it in the _tabus_ against certain animals
as foods (as the Mosaic prohibition of pork); at first the animal was
too sacred to eat, but in time people came to think that it is too
disgusting to eat. They begin the practice for one reason, they continue
it for a totally opposed reason. Reasons are such a superficial part of
our lives!
Thus every movement of sexual hygiene necessarily clashes against an
established convention which is itself an inharmonious clash of
contradictory notions. This is especially the case if sexual hygiene is
introduced by way of the school. It is very widely held by many who
accept the arguments so ably set forth by Frau Maria Lischnewska, that
the school is not only the best way of introducing sexual hygiene, but
the only possible way, since through this channel alone is it possible
to employ an antidote to the evil influences of the home and the
world.[186] Yet to teach children what some of their parents consider as
too sacred to be taught, and others as too disgusting, and to begin this
teaching at an age when the children, having already imbibed these
parental notions, are old enough to be morbidly curious and prurient, is
to open the way to a complicated series of social reactions which demand
great skill to adjust.
Largely, no doubt, from anxiety to counterbalance these dangers, there
has been a tendency to emphasize, or rather to over-emphasize, the moral
aspects of sexual hygiene. Rightly considered, indeed, it is not easy to
over-value its moral significance. But in the actual teaching of such
hygiene it is quite easy, and the error is often found, to make
statements and to affirm doctrines--all in the interests of good morals
and with the object of exhibiting to the utmost the beneficial
tendencies of this teaching--which are dubious at the best and often at
variance with actual experience. In such cases we seem to see that the
sexual hygienist has indeed broken with the conventional conspiracy of
silence in these matters, but he has not broken with the conventional
morality which grew out of that ignorant silence. With the best
intention in the world he sets forth, dogmatically and without
qualification, ancient half-truths which to become truly moral need to
be squarely faced with their complementary half-truths. The inevitable
danger is that the pupil sooner or later grasps the one-sided
exaggeration of this teaching, and the credit of the sexual hygienist is
gone. Life is an art, and love, which lies at the heart of life, is an
art; they are not science; they cannot be converted into clear-cut
formulæ and taught as the multiplication table is taught. Example here
counts for more than precept, and practice teaches more than either,
provided it is carried on in the light of precept and example. The rash
and unqualified statements concerning the immense benefits of
continence, or the awful results of self-abuse, etc., frequently found
in books for young people will occur to every one. Stated with wise
moderation they would have been helpful. Pushed to harsh extravagance
they are not only useless to aid the young in their practical
difficulties, but become mischievous by the injury they inflict on
over-sensitive consciences, fearful of falling short of high-strung
ideals. This consideration brings us, indeed, to what is perhaps the
chief danger in the introduction of any teaching of sexual hygiene: the
fact that our teachers are themselves untaught. Sexual hygiene in the
full sense--in so far as it concerns individual action and not the
regulative or legislative action of communities--is the art of imparting
such knowledge as is needed at successive stages by the child, the youth
and maiden, the young man and woman, in order to enable them to deal
rightly, and so far as possible without injury either to themselves or
to others, with all those sexual events to which every one is naturally
liable. To fulfil his functions adequately the master in the art of
teaching sexual hygiene must answer to three requirements: (1) he must
have a sufficing knowledge of the facts of sexual psychology, sexual
physiology, and sexual pathology, knowledge which, in many important
respects, hardly existed at all until recently, and is only now
beginning to become generally accessible; (2) he must have a wise and
broad moral outlook, with a sane idealism which refrains from demanding
impossibilities, and resolutely thrusts aside not only the vulgar
platitudes of worldliness, but the equally mischievous platitudes of an
outworn and insincere asceticism, for the wise sexual hygienist knows,
with Pascal, that "he who tries to be an angel becomes a beast," and is
less anxious to make his pupils ineffective angels than effective men
and women, content to say with Browning, "I may put forth angels'
pinions, once unmanned, but not before"; (3) in addition to sound
knowledge and a wise moral outlook, the sexual hygienist must possess,
finally, a genuine sympathy with the young, an insight into their
sensitive shyness, a comprehension of their personal difficulties, and
the skill to speak to them simply, frankly, and humanly. If we ask
ourselves how many of the apostles of sexual hygiene combine these
three essential qualities, we shall probably not be able to name many,
while we may suspect that some do not even possess one of the three
qualifications. If we further consider that the work of sexual hygiene,
to be carried out on a really national scale, demands the more or less
active co-operation of parents, teachers, and doctors, and that parents,
teachers, and doctors are in these matters at present all alike
untrained, and usually prejudiced, we shall realize some of the dangers
through which sexual hygiene must at first pass.
It is, I hope, unnecessary for me to say that, in thus pointing out some
of the difficulties and the risks which must assail every attempt to
introduce an element of effective sexual hygiene into life, I am far
from wishing to argue that it is better to leave things as they are.
That is impossible, not only because we are realizing that our system of
incomplete silence is mischievous, but because it is based on a
confusion which contains within itself the elements of disruption. We
have to remember, however, that the creation of a new tradition cannot
be effected in a day. Before we begin to teach sexual hygiene the
teachers must themselves be taught.
There are many who have insisted, and not without reason, on the right
of the parent to control the education of the child. Sexual hygiene
introduces us to another right, the right of the child to control the
education of the parents. For few parents to-day are fitted to exercise
the duty of training and guiding the child in the difficult field of sex
without preliminary education, and such education, to be real and
effective, must begin at an early age in the parents' life.[187]
The school teacher, again, on whom so many rely for the initial stage in
sexual hygiene, is at present often in almost exactly the same stage of
ignorance or prejudice in these matters as his or her pupils. The
teacher has seldom been trained to impart even the most elementary
scientific knowledge of the facts of sex, of reproduction, and of sexual
hygiene, and is more often than not without that personal experience of
life in its various aspects which is required in order to teach wisely
in such a difficult field as that of sex, even if the principle is
admitted that the teacher in class, equally whether addressing one sex
or both sexes, is not called upon to go beyond the scientific, abstract,
and objective aspects of sex.
This difficulty of the lack of suitable teachers is not, indeed,
insuperable. It would be largely settled, no doubt, if a wise and
thorough course of sexual hygiene and puericulture formed part of the
training of all school teachers, as, in France, Pinard has proposed for
the Normal schools for young women. Dr. W.O. Henry, in a paper read
before the Nebraska State Medical Association in May, 1911, put forward
the proposal: "Let each State have one or more competent physicians
whose duty it shall be to teach these things to the children in all the
public schools of the State from the time they are eight years of age.
The boys and girls should be given the instruction separately by means
of charts, pictures, and stereopticon views, beginning with the lower
forms of life, flowers, plants, and then closing with the organs in man.
These lectures and illustrations should be given every year to all the
boys and girls separately, having those from eight to ten together at
one time, and those from ten to twelve, and those from over twelve to
sixteen." Dr. Henry was evidently not aware that the principle of a
special teacher appointed by Government to give special instruction in
matters of sex in all State schools had already been adopted in Canada,
in the province of Ontario; the teacher thus appointed goes from school
to school and teaches the elements of sexual physiology and anatomy, and
the duty of treating sexual matters with reverence, to classes of boys
and of girls from the age of ten. The course is not compulsory, but any
School Board may call upon the special teacher to deliver the lectures.
This appointment has met with so much approval that it is proposed to
appoint further teachers on the same lines, women as well as men.
It is not necessary that the school teacher of sex should be a
physician. For personal and particular advice on the concrete
difficulties of sex, however, as well as for the more special and
detailed hygiene of the sexual relationship and the precautions demanded
by eugenics, we must call in the physician. Yet none of these things so
far enter the curriculum through which the physician passes to reach
his profession; he is often only a layman in relation to them. Even if
we are assured that these subjects form part of his scientific
equipment, that fact by no means guarantees his tact, sympathy, and
insight in addressing the young, whether by general lectures or
individual interviews, both these being forms of imparting sexual
hygiene for which we may properly call upon the physician, especially
towards the end of the school or college course, and at the outset of
any career in the world.[188]
Undoubtedly we have amongst us many mothers, teachers, and physicians
who are admirably equipped to fulfil their respective parts--elementary,
secondary, and advanced--in the work of sexual hygiene. But so long as
they are few and far apart their influence is negatived, if it is not
even rendered harmful.
It must often be useless for a mother to instil into her little boy
respect for his own body, reverence for the channel of motherhood
through which he entered the world, any sense of the purity of natural
functions or the beauty of natural organs, if outside his home the
little boy finds that all other little boys and girls regard these
things as only an occasion for sniggering. It is idle for the teacher to
describe plainly the scientific facts of sex as a marvellous culmination
in the natural unfolding of the world if, outside the schoolroom, the
pupil finds that, in the newspapers and in the general conversation of
adults, this sacred temple is treated as a common sewer, too filthy to
be spoken of, and that the books which contain even the most necessary
descriptions of it are liable to be condemned as "obscene" in the law
courts.[189] It is vain for the physician to explain to young men and
women the subtle and terrible nature of venereal poisons, to declare the
right and the duty of both partners in marriage to know, authoritatively
and beforehand, the state of each other's health, or to warn them that a
proper sense of responsibility towards the race must prevent some
ill-born persons from marrying, or at all events from procreating, if
the young man and woman find, on leaving the physician, that their
acquaintances are prepared to accept all these risks, light-heartedly,
in the dark, in a heedless dream from which they somehow hope there will
be no awful awakening.
The moral to which these observations point is fairly clear. Sex
penetrates the whole of life. It is not a branch of mathematics, or a
period of ancient history, which we can elect to teach, or not to teach,
as may seem best to us, which if we teach we may teach as we choose, and
if we neglect to teach it will never trouble us. Love and Hunger are the
foundations of life, and the impulse of sex is just as fundamental as
the impulse of nutrition. It will not remain absent because we refuse to
call for its presence, it will not depart because we find its presence
inconvenient. At the most it will only change its shape, and mock at us
from beneath masks so degraded, and sometimes so exalted, that we are no
longer able to recognize it.
"People are always writing about education," said Chamfort more than a
century ago, "and their writings have led to some valuable methods. But
what is the use, unless side by side with the introduction of such
methods, corresponding reforms are not introduced in legislation, in
religion, in public opinion? The only object of education is to conform
the child's reason to that of the community. But if there is no
corresponding reform in the community, by training the child to reason
you are merely training him to see the absurdity of opinions and customs
consecrated by the seal of sacred authority, public or legislative, and
you are inspiring him with contempt of them."[190] We cannot too often
meditate on these wise words.
It is useless to attempt to introduce sexual hygiene as a subject apart,
and in some respects it may be dangerous. When we touch sex we are
touching sensitive fibres which thrill through the whole of our social
organism, just as the touch of love thrills through the whole of the
bodily organism. Any vital reform here, any true introduction of sexual
hygiene to replace our traditional policy of confused silence, affects
the whole of life or it affects nothing. It will modify our social
conventions, enter our family life, transform our moral outlook, perhaps
re-inspire our religion and our philosophy.
That conclusion need by no means render us pessimistic concerning the
future of sexual hygiene, nor unduly anxious to cling to the policy of
the past. But it may induce us to be content to move slowly, to prepare
our movements widely and firmly, and not to expect too much at the
outset. By introducing sexual hygiene we are breaking with the tradition
of the past which professed to leave the process by which the race is
carried on to Nature, to God, especially to the devil. We are claiming
that it is a matter for individual personal responsibility, deliberately
exercised in the light of precise knowledge which every young man and
woman has a right, or rather a duty, to possess. That conception of
personal responsibility thus extended to the sphere of sex in the
reproduction of the race may well transform life and alter the course of
civilization. It is not merely a reform in the class-room, it is a
reform in the home, in the church, in the law courts, in the
legislature. If sexual hygiene means that, it means something great,
though something which can only come slowly, with difficulty, with much
searching of hearts. If, on the other hand, sexual hygiene means nothing
but the introduction of a new formal catechism, and an occasional
goody-goody perfunctory exhortation, it may be introduced at once, quite
easily, without hurting anyone's feelings. But, really, it will not be
worth worrying about, one way or the other.
FOOTNOTES:
[181] For a full discussion of the movement, see Havelock Ellis, _Studies
in the Psychology of Sex_, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society," chaps.
II and III.
[182] Basedow (born at Hamburg 1723, died 1790) set forth his views on
sexual education--which will seem to many somewhat radical and advanced
even to-day--in his great treatise Elementarwerk (1774). His practical
educational work is dealt with by Pinloche, _La Réforme de l'Education
en Allemagne au Dix-huitième Siècle_.
[183] The best of these papers have been printed in a volume entitled _Am
Lebensquell_.
[184] The elaborate and admirable initiation of boys among the natives of
Torres Straits furnishes a good example of this education, and has been
fully described by Dr. A.C. Haddon, _Reports of the Anthropological
Expedition to Torres Straits_, Vol. V, chaps. VII and XII.
[185] Moll in his wise and comprehensive work, _The Sexual Life of the
Child_ (German ed., p. 225), lays it down emphatically that "_we must
clearly realize at the outset that the complete exclusion of sexual
stimuli in the education of children is impossible_." He adds that the
demands made by some "fanatics of hygiene" would be dangerous even if
they were practicable. Games and physical exercises induce in many cases
a considerable degree of sexual stimulation. But this need not cause us
undue alarm, nor must we thereby be persuaded to change our policy of
recommending such games and exercises.
[186] See Frau Maria Lischnewska's excellent pamphlet, _Geschlechtliche
Belehrung der Kinder_, first published in _Mutterschutz_, 1905, Heft 4
and 5. This is perhaps the ablest statement of the argument in favour of
giving the chief place in sexual hygiene to the teacher. Frau
Lischnewska recognizes three factors in the movement for freeing the
sexual activities from degradation: (1) medical, (2) economic, and (3)
rational. But it is the last--in the broadest sense as a comprehensive
process of enlightenment--which she regards as the chief. "The views and
sentiments of people must be changed," she says. "The civilized man must
learn to gaze at this piece of Nature with pure eyes; reverence towards
it must early sink into his soul. In the absence of this fundamental
renovation, medical and social measures will merely produce refined
animals."
[187] "We parents of to-day," as Henriette Fürth truly says ("Erotik und
Elternpflicht," _Am Lebensquell_, p. 11), "have not yet attained that
beautiful naturalness out of which in these matters simplicity and
freedom grow. And however willing we may be to learn afresh, most of us
have so far lost our inward freedom from prejudice--the standpoint of
the pure to whom all things are pure--that we cannot acquire it again.
We parents of to-day have been altogether wrongly brought up. The
inoculated feeling of shame still remains even after we have recognized
that shame in this connection is false."
[188] The method of imparting a knowledge of sexual hygiene (especially in
relation to venereal diseases) at the outset of adult life has most
actively been carried out in Germany and the United States. In Germany
lectures by doctors to students and others on these matters are
frequently given. In the United States information and advice are spread
abroad chiefly by the aid of societies. The American Society of Sanitary
and Moral Prophylaxis, with which the name of Dr. Morrow is specially
connected, was organized in 1905. The Chicago Society of Social Hygiene
was established in 1906. Since then many other similar societies have
sprung up under medical auspices in various American cities and states.
[189] Many flagrant cases in point are set forth from the legal point of
view by Theodore Schroeder, _"Obscene" Literature and Constitutional
Law_, New York, 1911, chap. IV.
[190] Chamfort, _OEuvres Choisies_, ed. by Lescure, Vol. I, p. 33.
IX
IMMORALITY AND THE LAW
Social Hygiene and Legal Compulsion--The Binding Force of Custom
among Savages--The Dissolving Influence of Civilization--The
Distinction between Immorality and Criminality--Adultery as a
Crime--The Tests of Criminality--National Differences in laying
down the Boundary between Criminal and Immoral
Acts--France--Germany--England--The United States--Police
Administration--Police Methods in the United States--National
Differences in the Regulation of the Trade in Alcohol--Prohibition
in the United States--Origin of the American Method of Dealing with
Immorality--Russia--Historical Fluctuations in Methods of dealing
with Immorality and Prostitution--Homosexuality--Holland--The Age
of Consent--Moral Legislation in England--In the United States--The
Raines Law--American Attempts to Suppress Prostitution--Their
Futility--German Methods of Regulating Prostitution--The Sound
Method of Approaching Immorality--Training in Sexual
Hygiene--Education in Personal and Social Responsibility.
The modern development of Social Hygiene in matters of Eugenics has
already sufficed to show that there are certain people in the community,
anxious to take quick cuts to the millennium, who think that Eugenics
can be promoted by hasty legislation. That method of attempting to
further social progress is not new. It has been practised with signal
lack of success for several thousand years. Therefore, if Social Hygiene
is really to progress among us on sane and fundamental lines, it is
necessary for us to realize clearly the mistakes of the past. Again and
again the blind haste of over-zealous reformers has led not to
progress, but to retrogression. The excellent intentions of such social
reformers have been defeated, not so much by the evils they have sought
to overcome, as by their own excesses of ignorant zeal. As our knowledge
of history and of psychology increases, we learn that, in dealing with
human nature, what seems the longest way round is sometimes the shortest
way home.
Among savages, and no doubt in primitive societies generally, the social
reaction against injurious or even unusual acts on the part of
individuals is regulated by the binding force of custom. The ruling
opinion is the opinion of all, the ruling custom is the duty for all.
The dictates of custom, even of ritual and etiquette, are stringent
dictates of morality binding upon all, and the breach of any is
equivalent to what we should consider a crime. The savage man is held in
the path of duty by a much more united force of public opinion than is
the civilized man. But, as Westermarck points out, in a suggestive
chapter on customs and laws as the expression of moral ideas, "custom
never covers the whole field of morality, and the uncovered space grows
larger in proportion as the moral consciousness develops.... The rule of
custom is the rule of duty at early stages of development. Only progress
in culture lessens its sway."[191] As a community increases in size and in
cultivation, growing more heterogeneous, it adheres rigidly to
fundamental conceptions of right and wrong, but in less fundamental
matters its moral ideas become both more subjective and more various. If
a man kills another man out of love to that man's wife, all civilized
society is of opinion that the homicide is a "crime" to be severely
punished; but if the man should make love to the wife without killing
the husband, then, although in some savage societies the act would still
have been a "crime," in a civilized society it would usually be regarded
as more properly a case for civil action, not for criminal action; while
should it come to be known that the wife had from the first been in love
with the man, and was married by compulsion to a husband who had
brutally ill-used her, then a very considerable section of the civilized
community would actually transfer their sympathies to the offending
couple and look upon the husband as the real offender.
This is why the vestigial relics of the ancient ecclesiastical view of
adultery as a "crime" are no longer supported by public opinion;[192] they
are no longer enforced, or else the penalty is reduced to ridiculous
dimensions (as in France, where a fine of a few francs may be imposed),
and there is a general inclination to abolish them altogether. Penalties
for adultery are not nowadays enacted afresh, except in the United
States, where medieval regulations are enabled to survive through the
strength of the Puritan tradition. Thus in the State of New York a law
was passed in 1907 rendering any person guilty of adultery punishable by
six months' imprisonment, or a heavy fine, or both. The law was largely
due to agitation by the National Christian League for the Promotion of
Purity; it was supposed the law would act to prevent adultery. Less than
three months after the Act became law, lawyers reached the conclusion
that it was a dead letter. During the two years after its enactment,
notwithstanding the large number of divorces, only three persons were
sent to prison, for a few days, under this Act, and only four fined a
small sum. The Committee of Fourteen state that it is "of practically no
effect," and add: "The preventive values of this statute cannot be
determined, but, judging from the prosecutions, it has proved an
ineffective weapon against immorality, and has practically no effect
upon commercialized vice."[193] When such laws remain on the Statute Book
as relics of practically medieval days they deserve a certain respect,
even if it is impossible to enforce them; to re-enact them in modern
times is a gratuitous method of bringing law into contempt.
It is clear that all such cases affecting morals are not only altered by
circumstances, and by consideration of the psychic state of the
individual, but that in regard to them different sections of the
community hold widely different views. The sanctions of the criminal law
to be firm and unshakeable must be capable of literal interpretation
and of unfailing execution, and in that interpretation and execution be
accepted as just by the whole community. But as soon as law enters the
sphere of morals this becomes impossible; law loses all its certainty
and all the reverence that rightly belongs to it. It no longer voices
the conscience of the whole community; it tends to be merely an
expression of the feelings of a small upper-class social circle; the
feelings and the habits and the necessities of the mass of the
population are altogether ignored.[194] Nor are such legislative
incursions into the sphere of morals any more satisfactory from the
point of view of the class which is responsible for them. It very soon
begins to be felt that, as Hagen puts it, "the formulas of penal law are
stiff and clumsy instruments which can only in the rarest instance serve
to disentangle the delicate and manifoldly interwoven threads of the
human soul, and decide what is just and what unjust. Formulas are
adopted for simple, uncomplicated, rough everyday cases. Only in such
cases do they achieve the conquest of justice over injustice."
It is true that no sharp line divides criminal acts from merely immoral
acts, and the latter tend to be indirectly, even when not directly,
anti-social. It would be highly convenient if we could draw a sharp
distinction between major anti-social acts, which may properly be
described as "crime," and justly be pursued with the full rigour of the
law, and minor anti-social acts, which may be left to the varying
reaction of the social environments since they cannot properly be
visited by the criminal law.[195] Such a distinction exists, but it cannot
be made sharply because there are a large number of intermediate
anti-social acts which some sections of the community regard as major,
while others regard them as minor, or even, in some cases, as not
anti-social at all. The only convenient test we can apply is the
strength of the social reaction--provided we are dealing with an act
which is definitely anti-social, injuring recognized rights, and not
merely an unusual or disgusting act.[196] When an anti-social act meets
with a reaction of social indignation which is fairly universal and
permanent, it may be regarded as a crime coming under the jurisdiction
of the law. If opinion varies, if a considerable section of the
community revolt against the punishment of the alleged anti-social act,
then we are not entitled to dignify it with the appellation of "crime."
This is not an altogether sure or satisfactory criterion because there
are frequently times and places, especially under the stimulation of
some particular occurrence evoking an outburst of increased public
emotion, when a section of the community succeeds by its noisy vigour in
creating the impression that it voices the universal will. But, on the
whole, it works out justly. Ethical standards differ in different places
at different times. They are, indeed, always changing. Therefore, in
regard to all matters which belong to the sphere of what we commonly
call morals, there are in every community some who approve of a given
act, others who disapprove of it, yet others who regard it with
indifference. In such a shifting sphere we cannot legislate with the
certainty of carrying the whole community with us, nor can we properly
introduce the word "crime," which ought to indicate only an action of so
gravely anti-social nature that there can be no possibility of doubt
about it.
It is, however, important to understand the marked national differences
in the reaction to these slightly or dubiously anti-social acts, for
such differences rest on ancient tradition, and are to some extent the
expression of the genius of a people, though they are not the absolutely
immutable product of racial constitution, and, within limits, they
undergo transformation. It thus happens that acts which in some
countries are pursued by the law and punished as crime, are in other
countries untouched by the law, and left to the social reaction of the
community. It becomes, therefore, of some importance to compare national
differences in the attitude towards immorality, to find out whether the
attempt to repress it directly, by law, is more effective, or less
effective, than the method of leaving it to social reaction.
In many respects France and Germany present a remarkable contrast in
their respective methods of dealing with immorality. The contrast has
only existed since the sweeping legal reforms which followed the
Revolution in France. In old France the laws against sexual and
religious offences were extremely severe, involving in some cases death
at the stake, and even during the eighteenth century this extreme
penalty of the law was sometimes carried out. The police were active,
their methods of investigation elaborate and thorough, yet the rigour of
the law and the energy of the police signally failed to suppress
irreligion and immorality in eighteenth-century France. The Revolution,
by popularizing the opinions of the more enlightened men of the time,
and by giving to the popular voice an authority it had never possessed
before, remoulded the antiquated ecclesiastical laws in accordance with
the ideas of the average modern man. In 1791 nearly all the ancient laws
against immorality, which had proved so ineffectual, were flung away,
and when in 1810 Napoleon established the great penal code which bears
his name, he was careful to limit to a minimum the moral offences of
which the law was empowered to take cognisances, and--acting certainly
in accordance with deeply rooted instincts of the French people--he
avoided any useless or dangerous interference with private life and the
freedom of the individual. The penal code in France remains
substantially the same to-day, while the other countries which have
constructed their codes on the French model have shown similar
tendencies.
In Germany, and more especially in Prussia, which now dominates German
opinion, a very different tendency prevails. The German feels nothing of
that sensitive jealousy with which the French seek to guard private life
and the rights of the individual. He tolerates a police system which, as
Fuld has pointed out, is the most military police system in the world,
and he makes little complaint of the indiscriminating thoroughness, even
harshness, with which it exercises its functions. "The North German," as
a German lawyer puts it, "gazes with sacred respect on every State
authority, and on every official, especially on executive and police
functionaries; he complacently accepts police inquisition into his
private life, and the regulation of his behaviour by law and police
affects his impulse of freedom in a relatively slight manner. Hence the
law-maker's interference with his private life seems to him a customary
and not too injurious encroachment on his individuality."[197] It thus
comes about that a great many acts, of for the most part unquestioned
immoral character--such as incest, the procuring of women for immoral
purposes, and acts of a homosexual character--which, when adults are
alone concerned, the French leave to be dealt with by the social
reaction, are in Germany directly dealt with by the law. These things
and the like are viewed in France with fully as much detestation as in
Germany, but while the German considers that that detestation is itself
a reason for inflicting a legal penalty on the detested act, the
Frenchman considers that to inflict a punishment upon such acts by law
is an inadmissible interference of the State in private affairs, and an
unnecessary interference since the social reaction is quite adequate. In
Germany, Dr. Wilhelm points out, a man who allows his daughter's
_fiancé_ to stay overnight in his house with her is liable to be dragged
before the police court and sent to prison for procuring immorality;[198]
to a Frenchman this is a shocking and inconceivable insult to private
rights.[199] So also with the German legal attitude towards sexual
inversion. The German method of dragging private scandals into the
glare of day and investigating them at interminable length in the law
courts is a perpetual source of astonishment to Frenchmen. They point
out that not only does this method defeat its own end by concentrating
attention on the abnormal practices it attacks, but it adds dignity to
them; a certain small section of the community justifies and upholds
these practices, but while in France this section has no reason to come
prominently before the public since it has no grievances demanding
redress, in Germany the existence of a cause to advocate in the name of
justice has produced a serious and imposing body of literature which has
no parallel in France.[200] Thus, as Wilhelm points out, we find exactly
opposite methods adopted in Germany and France to obtain the same ends:
"In Germany, punishment on account of alleged injury to general
interests; in France absence of punishment in order to avoid injury to
general interests; in Germany the police baton is called for in order to
ward off threatened injury, while in France it is feared that the use of
the police baton will itself cause the injury."
The question naturally arises: Which method is the more effective?
Wilhelm finds that these differences in national attitude towards
immorality have not by any means rendered immorality more prevalent in
France than in Germany; on the contrary, though extra-conjugal
intercourse is in Germany almost a crime, sexual offences against
children are far more prevalent than in France, while family life is at
least as stable in France as in Germany, and more intimate. "The freer
way of regarding sexual matters and its results in legislation have, as
compared to Germany, in no respect led to more immoral conditions,
while, on the other hand, it has been the reason why the vigorous
agitation which we find in Germany for certain legal reforms in respect
to sexuality are quite unknown."
It is forgotten, in Germany and in some other countries, sometimes even
in France, that to bring immorality within reach of the arm of the law
is not necessarily by any means to make the actual penalty, in the
largest sense of the term, more severe. So long as he retains the good
opinion of his fellows, imprisonment is no injury to a man; it has
happened to some of our most distinguished and respected public men. The
bad opinion of his fellows, even when the law is powerless to touch him,
is often an irretrievable injury to a man. We do not fortify the social
reaction, in most matters, when we attempt to give it a legal sanction;
we do not even need to fortify it, for it is sometimes harsher and more
severe than the law, overlooking or not knowing all the extenuating
circumstances. In France, as in England, the force of social opinion,
independently of the law, is exceedingly and perhaps excessively
strong.
In England, however, we see an attitude towards immorality which differs
alike from the French attitude and the German attitude, though it has
points of contact with both. The distinctive feature of the Englishman's
attitude is his spirit of extreme individualism (which distinguishes him
from the German) combined with the religious nature of his moral fervour
(which distinguishes him from the Frenchman), both being veiled by a shy
prudery (which distinguishes him alike from the Frenchman and the
German). The Englishman's reverence for the individual's rights goes
beyond the Frenchman's, for in France there is a tendency to subordinate
the individual to the family, and in England the interests of the
individual predominate. But while in France the laws have been
re-moulded to the national temperament, this has not been the case to
anything like the same extent in England, where in modern times no great
revolution has occurred to shake off laws which still by their
antiquity, rather than by their reasonableness, retain the reverence of
the people. Thus it comes about that, on the legal side the English
attitude towards immorality in many respects resembles the German
attitude. Yet undoubtedly the most fundamental element in the English
attitude is the instinct for personal freedom, and even the religious
fervour of the moral impulse has strengthened the individualistic
element.[201] We see this clearly in the fact that England has even gone
beyond France in rejecting the control of prostitutes. The French are
striving to abolish such control, but in England where it was never
extensively established it has long been abolished, leaving only a few
faint traces behind. It is abhorrent to the English mind that even the
most degraded specimens of humanity should be compulsorily deprived of
rights over their own persons, even when it is claimed that the
deprivation of such rights might be for the benefit of the community. In
no country, perhaps, is the prostitute so free to parade the streets in
the exercise of her profession as in England, and in no country is
public opinion so intolerant of even the suspicion of a mistake by the
police in the exercise of that very limited control over prostitutes
which they possess. The freedom of the prostitute in England is further
guaranteed by the very fervour of English religious feeling; for active
interference with prostitutes involves regulation of prostitution, and
that implies a national recognition of prostitution which to a very
large section of the English people would be altogether repellant. Thus
English love of freedom and English love of God combine to protect the
prostitute. It has to be added that this result is by no means, as some
have imagined, hostile to morality. It is the opinion of many foreign
observers that in this matter London, for all its freedom, compares
favourably with many other large cities where prostitution is severely
regulated by the police and so far as possible concealed. For the police
can never become the agents of any morality of the heart, and all the
repression in the world can only touch the surface of life.
The English attitude, again, is characteristically seen in the method of
dealing with homosexual practices and other similar sexual aberrations.
Here, legally, England is closer to Germany than to modern France. No
country in the world, it is often said, has preserved by tradition and
even maintained by recent accretion such severe penalties against
homosexual offences as England. Yet, unlike the Germans, the English do
not actively prosecute in these cases and are usually content to leave
the law in abeyance, so long as public order and decency are reasonably
maintained. English people, like the French people, are by no means
impressed by the advantages of the German system by which purely private
scandals are made public scandals, to be set forth day after day in all
their details before the court, and discussed excitedly by the whole
population. Yet the English law in this matter is still very widely
upheld. There are very many English people who think that the fact that
homosexuality is disgusting to most people is a reason for punishing it
with extreme severity. Yet disgust is a matter of taste, we cannot
properly impart it into our laws; a disgusting person is not necessarily
a criminal person, or we shall have to enact that many inmates of our
hospitals and lunatic asylums be hanged. There is thus a fundamental
inconsistency in the English method of dealing with immorality; it is
made up of opposite views, some of them extreme in contrary directions.
But by virtue of the national tendency to compromise, these conflicting
tendencies work in a fairly harmonious manner. The result is that the
general state of English morality--notwithstanding, and perhaps partly
by reason of, its prudish anxiety to leave unpleasant matters alone--is
at least as satisfactory as that of countries where much more logical
and thorough methods are in favour.
In the United States we see yet another attitude towards immorality. It
is, indeed, related to the English attitude, necessarily so, since the
most ancient and fundamental element of it was carried over to America
by the English Puritans, who cherished in the extreme form alike the
English passion for individualism and the English fervour of religious
idealism. These germs have been too potent for destruction even under
all the new influences of American life. But they are not altogether in
harmony with those influences, and the result has been that the American
attitude towards immorality has sometimes looked rather like a
caricature of the English method. The influx of a vast and racially
confused population with the over-rapid development of urbanization
which has necessarily followed, opens an immense field for idealistic
individualism to attempt reforms. But this individualism has not been
held in check by the English spirit of compromise, which is not a part
of Puritanism, and it has thus tended alike to excess and to impotence.
This result is brought about partly by facilities for individualistic
legislation not voicing the tendencies of the whole population, and
therefore fatally condemned to sterility, and partly by the fact that in
a new and rapidly developed civilization it is impossible to secure an
army of functionaries who may be trusted to deal with the regulation of
delicate and complex moral questions in regard to which the community
is not really agreed. The American police are generally admitted to be
open with special frequency to the charge of ineffectiveness and
venality. It is not so often realized that these defects are fostered by
the impossible nature of the tasks which are imposed on the American
police.
This aspect of the matter has been very clearly set forth by Dr. Fuld,
of Columbia University, in his able and thorough book on police
administration.[202] He shows that, though the American police system as a
system has defects which need to be remedied, it is not true that the
individual members of the American police forces are inferior to those
of other countries; on the contrary, they are, in some respects,
superior; it is not a large proportion which sells the right to break
the law.[203] Their most serious defects are due to the impracticable laws
and regulations made by inexperienced legislators. These laws and
ordinances in many cases cannot possibly be enforced, and the weak
police officers accept money from the citizen for not enforcing rules
which in any case they could not enforce. "The American police forces,"
says Fuld, "have been corrupted almost solely by the statutes.... The
real blame attaches not to the policeman who accepts a bribe temptingly
offered him, nor to the bribe-giver who seeks by giving a bribe to make
the best possible business arrangement, but rather to the law, which by
giving the police a large and uncontrolled discretion in the enforcement
of the law places a premium upon bribe-giving and bribe-taking." This
state of things is rendered possible by the fact that the duties of the
police are not confined to matters affecting crime and public
order--matters which the whole community consider essential, and in
regard to which any police negligence is counted a serious charge--but
are extended to unessential matters which a considerable section of the
community, including many of the police themselves, view with complete
indifference. It is impossible to regard seriously a conspiracy to
defeat laws which a large proportion of citizens regard as unnecessary
or even foolish. It thus unfortunately comes about that the charge
brought against the American police that "it sells the right to break
the law" has not the same grave significance which it would have in most
countries, for the rights purchased in America may in most countries be
obtained without purchase. "An act ought to be made criminal," as Fuld
rightly lays down, "only when it is socially expedient to punish its
criminality.... The American people, or at least the American
legislators, do not make this clear distinction between vice and crime.
There seems to be a feeling in America that unless a vice is made a
crime, the State countenances the vice and becomes a party to its
commission. There are unfortunately a large number of men in the
community who believe that they have satisfied the demands made upon
them to lead a virtuous life by incorporating into some statute the
condemnation of a particular vicious act as a crime."[204] This special
characteristic of American laws, with its failure to distinguish between
vice and crime, is clearly a legacy of the early Puritans. The Puritans
carried over to New England independent autonomous laws of morality, and
were contemptuous of external law. The sturdy pioneers of the first
generation were faithful to that attitude, and were not even guilty of
punishing witches. But, when the opportunity came, their descendants
could not resist the temptation to erect an external law of morals, and,
like the Calvinists of Geneva, they set up an inquisition backed by the
secular arm. It was not until the days of Emerson that American
Puritanism regained autonomous freedom and moved in the same air as
Milton. But in the meantime the mischief had been done. Even to-day an
inquisition of the mails has been established in the United States. It
is said to be unconstitutional, and one can well believe that that is
so, but none the less it flourishes under the protection of what a
famous American has called "the never-ending audacity of elected
persons." But to allow subordinate officials to masquerade in the Postal
Department as familiars of the inquisition, in the supposed interests of
public morals, is a dangerous policy.[205] Its deadening influence on
national life cannot fail sooner or later to be realized by Americans.
To moralize by statute is idle and unsatisfactory enough; but it is
worse to attempt to moralize by the arbitrary dicta of minor government
officials.
It is interesting to observe the methods which find favour in some parts
of the United States for dealing with the trade in alcoholic liquors.
Alcohol is, on the one hand, a poison; on the other hand, it is the
basis of the national drinks of every civilized country. Every state has
felt called upon to regulate its sale to more or less extent, in such a
way that (1) in the interests of public health alcohol may not be too
easily or too cheaply obtainable, that (2) the restraints on its sale
may be a source of revenue to the State, and that (3) at the same time
this regulation of the sale may not be a vexatious and useless attempt
to interfere unduly with national customs. States have sought to attain
these ends in various ways. The sale of alcohol may be made a State
monopoly, as in Russia, or, again, it may be carried on under
disinterested municipal or other control, as by the Gothenburg system of
Sweden or the Samlag system of Norway.[206] In England the easier and more
usual plan is adopted of heavily taxing the sale, with, in addition,
various minor methods for restraining the sale of alcoholic drinks and
attempting to improve the conditions under which they are sold.
In France an ingenious method of influencing the sale of alcohol has
lately been adopted, in the interests of public health, which has proved
completely successful. The French national drink is light wine, which
may be procured in abundance, of excellent and wholesome quality and
very cheaply, provided it is not heavily taxed. But of recent years
there has been a tendency in France to consume in large quantity the
heavy alcoholic spirits, often of a specially deleterious kind. The plan
has been adopted of placing a very high duty on distilled beverages and
reducing the duty on the light wines, as well as beer, so that a
wholesome and genuine wine can be supplied to the consumer at as low a
price as beer. As a result the French consumer has shown a preference
for the cheap and wholesome wine which is really his national drink, and
there is an enormous fall in the consumption of spirits. Whereas
formerly the consumption of brandy in French towns amounted to seven or
eight litres of absolute alcohol per head, it has now fallen in the
large towns to 4.23 litres.[207]
In America, however, there is a tendency to deal with the sale of
alcohol totally opposed to that which nearly everywhere prevails in
Europe. When in Europe a man abandons the use of alcohol he makes no
demand on his fellow men to follow his example, or, if he does, he is
usually content to employ moral suasion to gain this end. But in the
United States, where there is no single national drink, a large number
of people have abandoned the use of alcohol, and have persuaded
themselves that its use by other people is a vice, for it is not
universally recognized that--"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to
live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live." Moreover, as
in the United States the medieval confusion between vice and crime still
subsists among a section of the population, being a part of the national
tradition, it became easy to regard the drinking of alcohol as a crime
and to make it punishable. Hence we have "Prohibition," which has
prevailed in various States of the Union and is especially associated
with Maine, where it was established in a crude form so long ago as 1846
and (except for a brief interval between 1856 and 1858) has prevailed
until to-day. The law has never been effective. It has been made more
and more stringent; the wildest excuses of arbitrary administration have
been committed; scandals have constantly occurred; officials of iron
will and determination have perished in the faith that if only they put
enough energy into the task the law might, after all, be at last
enforced. It was all in vain. It has always been easy in the cities of
Maine for those to obtain alcohol who wished to obtain it. Finally, in
1911, by a direct Referendum, the majority by which the people of Maine
are maintaining Prohibition has been brought down to 700 in a total poll
of 120,000, while all the large towns have voted for the repeal of
Prohibition by enormous majorities. The people of Maine are evidently
becoming dimly conscious that it is worse than useless to make laws
which no human power can enforce. "The result of the vote," writes Mr.
Arthur Sherwell, an English social Reformer, not himself opposed to
temperance legislation, "from every point of view, and not least from
the point of view of temperance, is eminently unsatisfactory, and it
unquestionably creates a position of great difficulty and embarrassment
for the authorities. A majority of 700 in a total poll of 120,000 is
clearly not a sufficient mandate for a drastic law which previous
experience has conclusively shown cannot be enforced successfully in the
urban districts of the State." Successful enforcement of prohibition on
a State basis would appear to be hopeless. The history of Prohibition in
Maine will for ever form an eloquent proof of the mischief which comes
when the ancient ecclesiastical failure to distinguish between the
sphere of morals and the sphere of law is perpetuated under the
conditions of modern life. The attempt to force men to render unto Cæsar
the things which are God's must always end thus.
In these matters we witness in America the survival of an ancient
tradition. The early Puritans were individualists, it is true, but their
individualism took a theocratic form, and, in the name of God, they
looked upon crimes and vices equally and indistinguishably as sins. We
see exactly the same point of view in the Penitentials of the ninth
century, which were ecclesiastical codes dealing, exactly in the same
spirit and in the same way, with crime and with vice, recognizing
nothing but a certain difference in degree between murder and
masturbation. In the ninth century, and even much later, in Calvin's
Geneva and Cotton Mather's New England, it was possible to carry into
practice this theocratic conception of the unity of vices and crimes and
the punishment as sins of both alike, for the community generally
accepted that point of view. But that is very far from being the case in
the United States of to-day. The result is that in America in this
respect we find a condition of things analogous to that which existed in
France, before the Revolution remoulded the laws in accordance with the
temperament of the nation. Laws and regulations of the medieval kind,
for the moral ordering of the smallest details of life, are still
enacted in America, but they are regarded with growing contempt by the
community and even by the administrators of the laws. It is realized
that such minute inquisition into the citizen's private life can only be
effectively carried out where the citizen himself recognizes the divine
right of the inquisitor. But the theocratic conception of life no longer
corresponds to American ideas or American customs; this minute moral
legislation rests on a basis which in the course of centuries has become
rotten. Thus it has come about that nowhere in the world is there so
great an anxiety to place the moral regulation of social affairs in the
hands of the police; nowhere are the police more incapable of carrying
out such regulation.
When we thus bear in mind the historical aspect of the matter we can
understand how it has come about that the individualistic idealist in
America has been much more resolute than in England to effect reforms,
much more determined that they shall be very thorough and extreme
reforms, and, especially, much more eager to embody his moral
aspirations in legal statutes. But his tasks are bigger than in England,
because of the vast, unstable, heterogeneous and crude population he has
to deal with, and because, at the same time, he has no firmly
established centralized and reliable police instrument whereby to effect
his reforms. The fiery American moral idealist is determined to set out
for the Kingdom of Heaven at once, but every steed he mounts proves
broken-winded, and speedily drops down by the wayside. Don Quixote sets
the lance at rest and digs his spurs into Rosinante's flanks, but he
fails to realize that, in our modern world, he will never bear him
anywhere near the foe.
If we wish to see a totally different national method of regarding
immorality we may turn to Russia. Here also we find idealism at work,
but it is not the same kind of idealism, since, far from desiring to
express itself by force, its essential basis is an absolute disbelief in
force. Russia, like France, has inherited from an ancient ecclesiastical
domination an extremely severe code of regulations against immorality
and all sexual aberrations, but, unlike France, it has not cast them off
in order to mould the laws in accordance with national temperament. The
essence of the Russian attitude in these matters is a sympathy with the
individual which is stronger than any antipathy aroused by his immoral
acts; his act is a misfortune rather than a sin or a crime. We may
observe this attitude in the kindly and helpful fashion in which the
Russian assists along the streets his fellow-man who has drunk too much
vodka, and, on a higher plane, we see the same spirit of forgiving human
tenderness in the Russian novelists, most clearly in the greatest and
most typically national, in Dostoieffsky and in Tolstoy. The harsh
rigidity of the old Russian laws had not the slightest influence, either
in changing this national attitude or in diminishing the prevalence, at
the very least as great as elsewhere, of sexual laxity or sexual
aberration. Nowadays, as Russia attains national self-consciousness,
these laws against immorality are being slowly remoulded in accordance
with the national temperament, and in some respects--as in its attitude
towards homosexuality and the introduction in 1907 of what is
practically divorce by mutual consent--they allow a freedom and latitude
scarcely equalled in any other country.[208]
Undoubtedly there is, within certain limits, mutual action and reaction
in these matters among nations. Thus the influence of France has led to
the abolition of the penalty against homosexual practices in many
countries, notably Holland, Spain, Portugal, and, more recently, Italy,
while even in Germany there is a strong and influential party, among
legal as well as medical authorities, in favour of taking the same step.
On the other hand, France has in some matters of detail departed from
her general principle in these matters, and has, for instance--without
doubt in an altogether justifiable manner--taken part in the
international movement against what is called the white slave trade.
This mutual reaction of nations is well recognized by the more alert and
progressive minds in every country, jealous of any undue interference
with liberty. When, for instance, a Bill is introduced in the English
Parliament for promoting inquisitorial and vexatious interference with
matters that are not within the sphere of legislation it is eagerly
discussed in Germany before even its existence is known to most people
in England, not so much out of interest in English Affairs as from a
sensitive dread that English example may affect German legislation.[209]
Not only, indeed, have we to recognize the existence of these clearly
marked and profound differences in legislative reaction to immorality.
We have also to realize that at different periods there are general
movements, to some extent overpassing national bounds, of rise and of
fall in this reaction.
A sudden impulse seizes on a community, and spreads to other
communities, to attempt to suppress some form of immorality by law. Such
attempts, as we know, have always ended in failure or worse than
failure, for laws against immorality are either not carried out, or, if
they are carried out, it is at once realized that new evils are created
worse than the original evils, and the laws speedily fall into abeyance
or are repealed. That has been repeatedly seen, and is well illustrated
by the history of prostitution, a sexual manifestation which for two
thousand years all sorts of persons in authority have sought to suppress
off-hand by law or by administrative fiat. From the time when
Christianity gained full political power, prostitution has again and
again been prohibited, under the severest penalties, but always in vain.
The mightiest emperors--Theodosius, Valentinian, Justinian, Karl the
Great, St. Louis, Frederick Barbarossa--all had occasion to discover
that might was here in vain, and worse than in vain, that they could not
always obey their own moral ordinances, still less coerce their subjects
into doing so, and that even so far as, on the surface, they were
successful they produced results more pernicious than the evils they
sought to suppress. The best known and one of the most vigorous of these
attempts was that of the Empress Maria Theresa in Vienna; but all the
cruelty and injustice of that energetic effort, and all the stringent,
ridiculous, and brutal regulations it involved--its prohibition of short
dresses, its inspection of billiard-rooms, its handcuffing of
waitresses, its whippings and its tortures--proved useless and worse
than useless, and were soon quietly dropped.[210] No more fortunate were
more recent municipal attempts in England and America (Portsmouth,
Pittsburgh, New York, etc.) to suppress prostitution off-hand; for the
most part they collapsed even in a few days.
The history of the legal attempts to suppress homosexuality shows the
same results. It may even be said to show more, for when the laws
against homosexuality are relaxed or abolished, homosexuality becomes,
not perhaps less prevalent (in so far as it is a congenital anomaly we
cannot expect its prevalence to be influenced by law), but certainly
less conspicuous and ostentatious. In France, under the Bourbons, the
sexual invert was a sacrilegious criminal who could legally be burnt at
the stake, but homosexuality flourished openly in the highest circles,
and some of the kings were themselves notoriously inverted. Since the
Code Napoléon was introduced homosexual acts, _per se_, have never been
an offence, yet instead of flourishing more vigorously, homosexuality
has so far receded into the background that some observers regard it as
very rare in France. In Germany and England, on the other hand, where
the antiquated laws against this perversion still prevail, homosexuality
is extremely prominent, and its right to exist is vigorously championed.
The law cannot suppress these impulses and passions; it can only sting
them into active rebellion.[211]
But although it has invariably been seen that all attempts to make men
moral by law are doomed to disappointment, spasmodic attempts to do so
are continually being made afresh. No doubt those who make these
attempts are but a small minority, people whose good intentions are not
accompanied by knowledge either of history or of the world. But though a
minority they can often gain a free field for their activities. The
reason is plain. No public man likes to take up a position which his
enemies may interpret as favourable to vice and probably due to an
anxiety to secure legal opportunities for his own enjoyment of vice.
This consideration especially applies to professional politicians. A
Member of Parliament, who must cultivate an immaculately pure
reputation, feels that he is also bound to record by his vote how
anxious he is to suppress other people's immorality. Thus the philistine
and the hypocrite join hands with the simple-minded idealist. Very few
are left to point out that, however desirable it is to prevent
immorality, that end can never be attained by law.
During the past ten years one of these waves of enthusiasm for the
moralization of the public by law has been sweeping across Europe and
America. Its energy is scarcely yet exhausted, and it may therefore be
worthwhile to call attention to it. The movement has shown special
activity in Germany, in Holland, in England, in the United States, and
is traceable in a minor degree in many other countries. In Germany the
Lex Heintze in 1900 was an indication of the appearance of this
movement, while various scandals have had the result of attracting an
exaggerated amount of attention to questions of immorality and of
tightening the rigour of the law, though as Germany already holds moral
matters in a very complex web of regulations it can scarcely be said
that the new movement has here found any large field of activity. In
Holland it is different. Holland is one of the traditional lands of
freedom; it was the home of independent intellect, of free religion, of
autonomous morals, when every other country in Europe was closed to
these manifestations of the spirit, and something of the same tradition
has always inspired its habits of thought, even when they have been
largely Puritanic. So that there was here a clear field for the movement
to work in, and it has found expression, of a very thorough character
indeed, in the new so-called "Morals Law" which was passed in 1911 after
several weeks' discussion. Undoubtedly this law contains excellent
features; thus the agents of the "white slave trade," who have hitherto
been especially active in Holland, are now threatened with five years'
imprisonment. Here we are concerned with what may fairly be regarded as
crime and rightly punishable as such. But excellent provisions like
these are lost to sight in a great number of other paragraphs which are
at best useless and ridiculous, and at worst vexatious and mischievous
in their attempts to limit the free play of civilization. Thus we find
that a year's imprisonment, or a heavy fine, threatens any one who
exposes any object or writing which "offends decency," a provision which
enabled a policeman to enter an art-pottery shop in Amsterdam and remove
a piece of porcelain on which he detected an insufficiently clothed
human figure. Yet this paragraph of the law had been passed with
scarcely any opposition. Another provision of this law deals extensively
with the difficult and complicated question of the "age of consent" for
girls, which it raises to the age of twenty-one, making intercourse with
a girl under twenty-one an offence punishable by four years'
imprisonment. It is generally regarded as desirable that chastity should
be preserved until adult age is well established. But as soon as sexual
maturity is attained--which is long before what we conventionally regard
as the adult age, and earlier in girls than in boys--it is impossible to
dismiss the question of personal responsibility. A girl over sixteen,
and still more when she is over twenty, is a developed human being on
the sexual side; she is capable of seducing as well as of being seduced;
she is often more mature than the youth of corresponding age; to
instruct her in sexual hygiene, to train her to responsibility, is the
proper task of morals. But to treat her as an irresponsible child, and
to regard the act of interfering with her chastity when her consent has
been given, as on a level with an assault on an innocent child merely
introduces confusion. It must often be unjust to the male partner in the
act; it is always demoralizing and degrading to the girl whom it aims at
"protecting"; above all, it reduces what ought to be an extremely
serious crime to the level of a merely nominal offence when it punishes
one of two practically mature persons for engaging with full knowledge
and deliberation in an act which, however undesirable, is altogether
according to Nature. There is here a fatal confusion between a crime and
an action which is at the worst morally reprehensible and only properly
combated by moral methods.
These objections are not of a purely abstract or theoretical character.
They are based on the practical outcome of such enactments. Thus in the
State of New York the "age of consent" was in former days thirteen
years. It was advanced to fourteen and afterwards to sixteen. This is
the extreme limit to which it may prudently be raised, and the New York
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which had taken the
chief part in obtaining these changes in the law, was content to stop at
this point. But without seeking the approval of this Society, another
body, the White Cross and Social Purity League, took the matter in hand,
and succeeded in passing an amendment to the law which raised the age of
consent to eighteen. What has been the result? The Committee of
Fourteen, who are not witnesses hostile to moral legislation, state that
"since the amendment went into effect making the age of consent eighteen
years there have been few successful prosecutions. The laws are
practically inoperative so far as the age clause is concerned." Juries
naturally require clear evidence that a rape has been committed when the
case concerns a grown-up girl in the full possession of her faculties,
possibly even a clandestine prostitute. Moreover, as rape in the first
degree involves the punishment of imprisonment for twenty years, there
is a disinclination to convict a man unless the case is a very bad one.
One judge, indeed, has asserted that he will not give any man the full
penalty under the present law, so long as he is on the bench. The
natural result of stretching the law to undue limits is to weaken it.
Instead of being, as it should be, an extremely serious crime, rape
loses in a large proportion of cases the opprobrium which rightly
belongs to it. It is, therefore, a matter for regret that in some
English dominions there is a tendency to raise the "age of consent" to
an unduly high limit. In New South Wales the Girls' Protection Act has
placed the age of consent at sixteen, and in the case of offences by
guardians, schoolmasters, or employers at seventeen years,
notwithstanding the vigorous opposition of a distinguished medical
member of the Legislative Council (the Hon. J.M. Creed), who presented
the arguments against so high an age. Not a single prosecution has so
far occurred under this Act.
In England the force of the moral legislation wave has been felt, but it
has been largely broken against the conservative traditions of the
country, which make all legislation, good or bad, very difficult. A
lengthy, elaborate and high-strung Prevention of Immorality Bill was
introduced in the House of Commons by a group of Nonconformists mainly
on the Liberal side. This Bill was very largely on the lines of the
Dutch law already mentioned; it proposed to raise the age of consent to
nineteen; making intercourse with a girl under that age felony,
punishable by five years' penal servitude, and any attempt at such
intercourse by two years' imprisonment. Such a measure would be, it may
be noted, peculiarly illogical and inconsistent in England and Scotland,
in both of which countries (though their laws in these matters are
independent) even a girl of twelve is legally regarded as sufficiently
mature and responsible to take to herself a husband. At one moment the
Bill seemed to have a chance of becoming law, but a group of enlightened
and independent Liberals, realizing that such a measure would introduce
intolerable social conditions, organized resistance and prevented the
acceptance of the Bill.
The chief organization in England at the present time for the promotion
of public morality is the National Council of Public Morals, which is a
very influential body, with many able and distinguished supporters.
Law-enforced morality, however, constitutes but a very small part of the
reforms advocated by this organization, which is far more concerned with
the home, the school, the Church, and the influences which operate in
those spheres. It has lately to a considerable extent joined hands with
the workers in the eugenic movement, advocating sexual hygiene and
racial betterment, thus allying itself with one of the most hopeful
movements of our day. Certainly there may be some amount of zeal not
according to knowledge in the activities of the National Council of
Public Morals, but there is also very much that is genuinely
enlightened, and the very fact that the Council includes representatives
from so many fields of action and so many schools of thought largely
saves it from running into practical excesses. Its influence on the
whole is beneficial, because, although it may not be altogether averse
to moral legislation, it recognizes that the policeman is a very feeble
guide in these matters, and that the fundamental and essential way of
bettering the public morality is by enlightening the private conscience.
In the United States conditions have been very favourable, as we have
seen, for the attempt to achieve social reform by moral legislation, and
nowhere else in the world has it been so clearly demonstrated that such
attempts not only fail to cure the evils they are aimed at, but tend to
further evils far worse than those aimed at. A famous example is
furnished by the so-called "Raines Law" of New York. This Act was passed
in 1896, and was intended to regulate the sale of alcoholic liquor in
all its phases throughout the State. The grounds for bringing it forward
were that the number of drinking saloons was excessive, that there was
no fixed licensing fee, that too much discretionary power was allowed to
the local commissioner; while, above all, the would-be Puritanic
legislators wished so far as possible to suppress the drinking of
alcoholic liquors on Sunday. To achieve these objects the licensing fee
was raised to four times its usual amount previously to this enactment;
heavy penalties, including the forfeiture of a large surety-bond, were
established, and more surely to prevent Sunday drinking only hotels, not
ordinary drinking bars, were allowed, with many stringent restrictions,
to sell drink on that day. In order that there should be no mistake, it
was set forth in the Act that the hotel must be a real hotel with at
least ten properly furnished bedrooms. The legislators clearly thought
that they had done a fine piece of work. "Seldom," wrote the Committee
of Fourteen, who are by no means out of sympathy with the aims of this
legislation, "has a law intended to regulate one evil resulted in so
aggravated a phase of another evil directly traceable to its
provisions."[212]
In the first place, the passing of this law alarmed the saloon keepers;
they realized that it had them in a very tight grip, and they suspected
that it might be strictly enforced. They came to the conclusion,
therefore, that their best policy would be to accept the law and to
conform themselves to its provisions by converting their drinking bars
into real hotels, with ten properly furnished bedrooms, kitchen, and
dining-room. The immediate result was the preparation of ten thousand
bedrooms, for which there was of course no real demand, and by 1905
there were 1407 certificated hotels in Manhattan and the Bronx alone,
about 1150 of these hotels having probably been created by the Raines
Law.
But something had to be done with all these bedrooms, properly furnished
according to law, for it was necessary to meet the heavy expenses
incurred under the new conditions created by the law. The remedy was
fairly obvious. These bedrooms were excellently adapted to serve as
places of assignation and houses of prostitution. Many hotel proprietors
became practically brothel keepers, the women in some cases becoming
boarders in the hotels; and saloons and hotels have entered into a kind
of alliance for their mutual benefit, and are sometimes indeed under the
same management. When a hotel is thus run in the interests of
prostitution it has what may be regarded as a staff of women in the
neighbouring streets. In some districts of New York it is found that
practically all the prostitutes on the street are connected with some
Raines Law hotel. These wise moral legislators of New York thought they
were placing a penalty on Sunday drinking; what they have really done
is to place a premium on prostitution[213].
An attempt of a different kind to strike a blow at once at alcohol and
at prostitution has been made in Chicago, with equally unsatisfactory
results. Drink and prostitution are connected, so intimately connected,
indeed, that no attempt to separate them can ever be more than
superficially successful even with the most minute inquisition by the
police, least of all by police officers, who, in Chicago, we are
officially told, are themselves sometimes found, when in uniform and on
duty, drinking among prostitutes in "saloons." On May 1, 1910, the
Chicago General Superintendent of Police made a rule prohibiting the
sale of liquor in houses of prostitution. On the surface this rule has
in most cases been observed (though only on the surface, as the
field-workers of the Chicago Vice Commission easily discovered), and a
blow was thus dealt to those houses which derive a large profit from the
sale of drinks on account of the high price at which they retail them.
Yet even so far as the rule has been obeyed, and not evaded, has it
effected any good? On this point we may trust the evidence of the Vice
Commissioners of Chicago, a municipal body appointed by the Mayor and
City Council, and not anxious to discredit the actions of their Police
Superintendent. "As to the benefits derived from this order, either to
the inmates or the public, opinions differ," they write. "It is
undoubtedly true that the result of the order has been to scatter the
prostitutes over a wide territory and to transfer the sale of liquor
carried on heretofore in houses to the near-by saloon-keepers, and to
flats and residential sections, but it is an open question whether it
has resulted in the lessening of either of the two evils of prostitution
and drink."[214] That is a mild statement of the results. It may be noted
that there are over seven thousand drinking saloons in Chicago, so that
the transfer is not difficult, while the migration to flats--of which an
enormous number have been taken for purposes of prostitution (five
hundred in one district alone) since this rule came into force--may
indeed enable the prostitute to live a freer and more humanizing life,
but in no faintest degree diminishes the prevalence of prostitution.
From the narrow police standpoint, indeed, the change is a disadvantage,
for it shelters the prostitute from observation, and involves an
entirely new readjustment to new conditions.
It cannot be said that either the State of New York or the city of
Chicago has been in any degree more fortunate in its attempts at moral
legislation against prostitution than against drinking. As we should
expect, the laws of New York regard prostitution and the prostitute with
an eye of extreme severity. Every prostitute in New York, by virtue of
the mere fact that she is a prostitute, is technically termed a
"vagrant." As such she is liable to be committed to the workhouse for a
term not exceeding six months; the owner of houses where she lives may
be heavily fined, as she herself may be for living in them, and the
keeper of a disorderly house may be imprisoned and the disorderly house
suppressed. It is not clear that the large number of prostitutes in New
York have been diminished by so much as a single unit, but from time to
time attempts are made in some district or another by an unusually
energetic official to put the laws into execution, and it is then
possible to study the results. When disorderly houses are suppressed on
a large scale, there are naturally a great number of prostitutes who
have to find homes elsewhere in order to carry on their business. On one
occasion, under the auspices of District-Attorney Jerome, it is stated
by the Committee of Fourteen that eight hundred women were reported to
be turned out into the street in a single night. For many there are the
Raines Law hotels. A great many others take refuge in tenement houses.
Such houses in congested districts are crowded with families, and with
these the prostitute is necessarily brought into close contact.
Consequently the seeds of physical and mental disorder which she may
bear about her are disseminated in a much more fruitful soil than they
were before. Moreover, she is compelled by the laws to exert very great
energy in the pursuit of her profession. As it is an offence to harbour
her she has to pay twice as high a rent as other people would have to
pay for the same rooms. She may have to pay the police to refrain from
molesting her, as well as others to protect her from molestation. She is
surrounded by people whom the law encourages to prey upon her. She is
compelled to exert her energies at highest tension to earn the very
large sums which are necessary, not to gain profits for herself, but to
feed all the sharks who are eager to grab what is given to her. The
blind or perverse zeal of the moral legislators not only intensifies the
evils it aims at curing, but it introduces a whole crop of new evils.
How large these sums are we may estimate by the investigation made by
the Vice Commissioners of Chicago. They conclude after careful inquiry
that the annual profits of prostitution in the city of Chicago alone
amount to between fifteen to sixteen million dollars, and they regard
this as "an ultra-conservative estimate." It is true that not all this
actually passes through the women's hands and it includes the sales of
drinks. If we confine ourselves strictly to the earnings of the girls
themselves it is found to work out at an average for each girl of
thirteen hundred dollars per annum. This is more than four times as much
as the ordinary shop-girl can earn in Chicago by her brains, virtue, and
other good qualities. But it is not too much for the prostitute's needs;
she is compelled to earn so large an income because the active hostility
of society, the law, and the police facilitates the task of all those
persons--and they are many--who desire to prey upon her. Thus society,
the law, and the police gain nothing for morals by their hostility to
the prostitute. On the contrary, they give strength and stability to
the very vice they nominally profess to fight against. This is shown in
the vital matter of the high rents which it is possible to obtain where
prostitution is concerned. These high rents are the direct result of
legal and police enactments against the prostitute. Remove these
enactments and the rents would automatically fall. The enactments
maintain the high rents and so ensure that the mighty protection of
capital is on the side of prostitution; the property brings in an
exorbitant rate of interest on the capital invested, and all the forces
of sound business are concerned in maintaining rents. So gross is the
ignorance of the would-be moral legislators--or, some may think, so
skilful their duplicity--that the methods by which they profess to fight
against immorality are the surest methods for enabling immorality not
merely to exist--which it would in any case--but to flourish. A vigorous
campaign is initiated against immorality. On the surface it is
successful. Morality triumphs. But, it may be, in the end we are
reminded of the saying of M. Desmaisons in one of Remy de Gourmont's
witty and profound _Dialogues des Amateurs_: "Quand la morale triomphe
il se passe des choses très vilaines."
The reason why the "triumphs" of legislative and administrative morality
are really such ignominious failures must now be clear, but may again be
repeated. It is because on matters of morals there is no unanimity of
opinion as there is in regard to crime. There is always a large section
of the community which feels tolerant towards, and even practises, acts
which another section, it may be quite reasonably, stigmatizes as
"immoral." Such conditions are highly favourable for the exercise of
moral influence; they are quite unsuitable for legislative action, which
cannot possibly be brought to bear against a large minority, perhaps
even majority, of otherwise law-abiding citizens. In the matter of
prostitution, for instance, the Vice Commissioners of Chicago state
emphatically the need for "constant and persistent repression" leading
on to "absolute annihilation of prostitution." They recommend the
appointment of a "Morals Commission" to suppress disorderly houses, and
to prosecute their keepers, their inmates, and their patrons; they
further recommend the establishment of a "Morals Court" of vaguely large
scope. Among the other recommendations of the Commissioners--and there
are ninety-seven such recommendations--we find the establishment of a
municipal farm, to which prostitutes can be "committed on an
indeterminate sentence"; a "special morals police squad"; instructions
to the police to send home all unattended boys and girls under sixteen
at 9 p.m.; no seats in the parks to be in shade; searchlights to be set
up at night to enable the police to see what the public are doing, and
so on. The scheme, it will be seen, combines the methods of Calvin in
Geneva with those of Maria Theresa in Vienna.[215]
The reason why any such high-handed repression of immorality by force is
as impracticable in Chicago as elsewhere is revealed in the excellent
picture of the conditions furnished by the Vice Commissioners
themselves. They estimate that the prostitutes in disorderly houses
known to the police--leaving out of account all prostitutes in flats,
rooms, hotels and houses of assignation, and also taking no note of
clandestine prostitutes--receive 15,180 visits from men daily, or
5,540,700 per annum. They consider further that the men in question may
be one-fourth of the adult male population (800,000 in the city itself,
leaving the surrounding district out of the reckoning), and they rightly
insist that this estimate cannot possibly cover all the facts. Yet it
never occurs to the Vice Commissioners that in thus proposing to brand
one-third or even only one quarter of the adult male population as
criminals, and as such to prosecute them actively, is to propose an
absurd impossibility.
It is not by any means only in the United States that an object lesson
in the foolishness of attempting to make people moral by force is set up
before the world. It has often been set up before, and at the present
day it is illustrated in exactly the same way in Germany. Unlike as are
the police systems and the national temperaments of Germany and the
United States, in this matter social reformers tell exactly the same
story. They report that the German laws and ordinances against
immorality increase and support the very evil they profess to attack.
Thus by making it criminal to shelter, even though not for purposes of
gain, unmarried lovers, even when they intend to marry, the respectable
girl is forced into the position of the prostitute, and as such she
becomes subject to an endless amount of police regulation and police
control. Landlords are encouraged to live on her activities, charging
very high rates to indemnify themselves for the risks they run by
harbouring her. She, in her turn, to meet the exorbitant demands which
the law and the police encourage the whole environment to make upon her,
is forced to exercise her profession with the greatest activity, and to
acquire the maximum of profit. Law and the police have forged the same
vicious circle.[216]
The illustrations thus furnished by Germany, Holland, England, and the
United States, will probably suffice to show that there really is at the
present time a wave of feeling in favour of the notion that it is
possible to promote public morals by force of law. It only remains to
observe that the recognition of the futility of such attempts by no
means necessarily involves a pessimistic conservatism. To point out that
prostitution never has been, and never can be, abolished by law, is by
no means to affirm that it is an evil which must endure for ever and
that no influence can affect it. But we have to realize, in the first
place, that prostitution belongs to that sphere of human impulses in
which mere external police ordinances count for comparatively little,
and that, in the second place, even in the more potent field of true
morals, which has nothing to do with moral legislation, prostitution is
so subtly and deeply rooted that it can only be affected by influences
which bear on all our methods of thought and feeling and all our social
custom. It is far from being an isolated manifestation; it is, for
instance, closely related to marriage; any reforms in prostitution,
therefore, can only follow a reform in our marriage system. But
prostitution is also related to economics, and when it is realized how
much has to be altogether changed in our whole social system to secure
even an approximate abolition of prostitution it becomes doubtful
whether many people are willing to pay the price of removing the "social
evil" they find it so easy to deplore. They are prepared to appoint
Commissions; they have no objection to offer up a prayer; they are
willing to pass laws and issue police regulations which are known to be
useless. At that point their ardour ends.
If it is impossible to guard the community by statute against the
central evil of prostitution, still more hopeless is it to attempt the
legal suppression of all the multitudinous minor provocations of the
sexual impulse offered by civilization. Let it be assumed that only by
such suppression, and not by frankly meeting and fighting temptations,
can character be formed, yet it would be absolutely impossible to
suppress more than a fraction of the things that would need to be
suppressed. "There is almost no feature, article of dress, attitude,
act," Dr. Stanley Hall has truly remarked, "or even animal, or perhaps
object in nature, that may not have to some morbid soul specialized
erogenic and erethic power." If, therefore, we wish to suppress the
sexually suggestive and the possibly obscene we are bound to suppress
the whole world, beginning with the human race, for if we once enter on
that path there is no definite point at which we can logically stop. The
truth is, as Mr. Theodore Schroeder has so repeatedly insisted,[217] that
"obscenity" is subjective; it cannot reside in an object, but only in
the impure mind which is influenced by the object. In this matter Mr.
Schroeder is simply the follower, at an interval, of St. Paul. We must
work not on the object, but on the impure mind affected by the object.
If the impure heart is not suppressed it is useless to suppress the
impure object, while if the heart is renewed the whole task is achieved.
Certainly there are books, pictures, and other things in life so unclean
that they can never be pure even to the purest, but these things by
their loathsomeness are harmless to all healthy minds; they can only
corrupt minds which are corrupt already. Unfortunately, when ignorant
police officials and custom-house officers are entrusted with the task
of searching for the obscene, it is not to these things that their
attention is exclusively directed. Such persons, it seems, cannot
distinguish between these things and the noblest productions of human
art and intellect, and the law has proved powerless to set them right;
in all civilized countries the list is indeed formidable of the splendid
and inspiring productions, from the Bible downwards, which officials or
the law courts have been pleased to declare "obscene." So that while the
task of moralizing the community by force must absolutely fail of its
object, it may at the same time suffice to effect much mischief.
It is one of the ironies of history that the passion for extinguishing
immorality by law and administration should have arisen in what used to
be called Christendom. For Christianity is precisely the most brilliant
proof the world has ever seen of the truth that immorality cannot so be
suppressed. From the standpoint of classic Rome Christianity was an
aggressive attack on Roman morality from every side. It was not so only
in appearance, but in reality, as modern historians fully recognize.[218]
Merely as a new religion Christianity would have been received with calm
indifference, even with a certain welcome, as other new religions were
received. But Christianity denied the supremacy of the State, carried on
an anti-military propaganda in the army, openly flouted established
social conventions, loosened family life, preached and practised
asceticism to an age that was already painfully aware that, above all
things, it needed men. The fatal though doubtless inevitable step was
taken of attempting to suppress the potent poison of this manifold
immorality by force. The triumph of Christianity was largely due to the
fine qualities which were brought out by that annealing process, and the
splendid prestige which the process itself assured. Yet the method of
warfare which it had so brilliantly proved to be worthless was speedily
adopted by Christianity itself, and is even yet, at intervals,
spasmodically applied.
That these attempts should have such results as we see is not surprising
when we remember that even movements, at the outset, mainly inspired by
moral energy, rather than by faith in moral legislation, when that
energy becomes reckless, violent and intolerant, lead in the end to
results altogether opposed to the aims of those who initiated them. It
was thus that Luther has permanently fortified the position of the Popes
whom he assailed, and that the Reformation produced the
Counter-Reformation, a movement as formidable and as enduring as that
which it countered. When Luther appeared all that was rigid and inhuman
in the Church was slowly dissolving, certainly not without an inevitable
sediment of immorality, yet the solution was in the highest degree
favourable to the development of the freer and larger conceptions of
life, the expansion of science and art and philosophy, which at that
moment was pre-eminently necessary for the progress of civilisation,
and, indirectly, therefore, for the progress of morals.[219] The violence
of the Reformation not only resulted in a new tyranny for its own
adherents--calling in turn for fresh reformations by Puritans, Quakers,
Deists, and Freethinkers--but it re-established, and even to-day
continues to support, that very tyranny of the old Church against which
it was a protest.
When we try to regulate the morals of men on the same uniform pattern we
have to remember that we are touching the most subtle, intimate, and
incalculable springs of action. It is useless to apply the crude methods
of "suppression" and "annihilation" to these complex and indestructible
forces. When Charles V retired in weariness from the greatest throne in
the world to the solitude of the monastery at Yuste, he occupied his
leisure for some weeks in trying to regulate two clocks. It proved very
difficult. One day, it is recorded, he turned to his assistant and said:
"To think that I attempted to force the reason and conscience of
thousands of men into one mould, and I cannot make two clocks agree!"
Wisdom comes to the rulers of men, sometimes, usually when they have
ceased to be rulers. It comes to the moral legislators not otherwise
than it comes to the immoral persons they legislate against. "I act
first," the French thief said; "then I think."
It seems to some people almost a paradox to assert that immorality
should not be encountered by physical force. The same people would
willingly admit that it is hopeless to rout a modern army with bows and
arrows, even with the support of a fanfare of trumpets. Yet that
metaphor, as we have seen, altogether fails to represent the inadequacy
of law in the face of immorality. We are concerned with a method of
fighting which is not merely inadequate, but, as has been demonstrated
many times during the last two thousand years, actually fortifies and
even dignifies the foe it professes to attack. But the failure of
physical force to suppress the spiritual evil of immorality by no means
indicates that a like failure would attend the more rational tactics of
opposing a spiritual force by spiritual force. The virility of our
morals is not proved by any weak attempt to call in the aid of the
secular arm of law or the ecclesiastical arm of theology. If a morality
cannot by its own proper virtue hold its opposing immorality in check
then there is something wrong with that morality. It runs the risk of
encountering a fresh and more vigorous movement of morality. Men begin
to think that, if not the whole truth, there is yet a real element of
truth in the assertion of Nietzsche: "We believe that severity,
violence, slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, secrecy,
stoicism, tempter's art and devilry of every kind, everything wicked,
tyrannical, predatory and serpentine in man, serves as well for the
elevation of the human species as its opposite."[220] To ignore altogether
the affirmation of that opposing morality, it may be, would be to breed
a race of weaklings, fatally doomed to succumb helplessly to the first
breath of temptation.
Although we are passing through a wave of moral legislation, there are
yet indications that a sounder movement is coming into action. The
demand for the teaching of sexual hygiene which parents, teachers, and
physicians in Germany, the United States and elsewhere, are now striving
to formulate and to supply will, if it is wisely carried out, effect far
more for public morals than all the legislation in the world.
Inconsistently enough, some of those who clamour for moral legislation
also advocate the teaching of sexual hygiene. But there is no room for
compromise or combination here. A training in sexual hygiene has no
meaning if it is not a training, for men and women alike, in personal
and social responsibility, in the right to know and to discriminate,
and in so doing to attain self-conquest. A generation thus trained to
self-respect and to respect for others has no use for a web of official
regulations to protect its feeble and cloistered virtues from possible
visions of evil, and an army of police to conduct it homewards at 9 p.m.
Nor, on the other hand, can any reliable sense of social responsibility
ever be developed in such an unwholesome atmosphere of petty moral
officialdom. The two methods of moralization are radically antagonistic.
There can be no doubt which of them we ought to pursue if we really
desire to breed a firmly-fibred, clean-minded, and self-reliant race of
manly men and womanly women.
FOOTNOTES:
[191] Westermarck, _Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_, Vol. I, p.
160; see also chapter on sexual morality in Havelock Ellis, _Studies in
the Psychology of Sex_, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society," chap. IX.
[192] It must be remembered that in medieval days not only adultery but
the smallest infraction of what the Church regarded as morality could be
punished in the Archdeacon's court; this continued to be the case in
England even after the Reformation. See Archdeacon W.W. Hales'
interesting work, _Precedents and Proceedings in Criminal Causes_
(1847), which is, as the author states, "a History of the Moral Police
of the Church."
[193] _The Social Evil in New York City_, p. 100.
[194] This has been emphasized in an able and lucid discussion of this
question by Dr. Hans Hagen, "Sittliche Werturteile," _Mutterschutz_,
Heft I and II, 1906. Such recognition of popular morals, he justly
remarks, is needed not only for the sake of the people, but for the sake
of law itself.
[195] Grabowsky, in criticizing Hiller's book, _Das Recht über sich Selbst_
(_Archiv für Kriminalanthropologie und Kriminalistik_, Bd. 36, 1809),
argues that in some cases immorality injures rights which need legal
protection, but he admits it is difficult to decide when this is the
case. He does not think that the law should interfere with homosexuality
in adults, but he does consider it should interfere with incest, on the
ground that in-breeding is not good for the race. But it is the view of
most authorities nowadays that in-breeding is only injurious to the race
in the case of an unsound stock, when the defect being in both partners
of the same kind would probably be intensified by heredity.
[196] The occurrence of, for instance, incestuous, bestial, and homosexual
acts--which are generally abhorrent, but not necessarily
anti-social--makes it necessary to exercise some caution here.
[197] I quote from a valuable and interesting study by Dr. Eugen Wilhelm,
"Die Volkspsychologischen Unterschiede in der französischen und
deustchen Sittlichkeits-Gesetzgebung und Rechtsprechung,"
_Sexual-Probleme_, October, 1911. It may be added that in Switzerland,
also, the tyranny of the police is carried to an extreme. Edith Sellers
gives some extraordinary examples, _Cornhill_, August, 1910.
[198] The absurdities and injustice of the German law, and its
interference with purely private interests in these matters, have often
been pointed out, as by Dr. Kurt Hiller ("Ist Kuppelei Strafwürdig?"
_Die Neue Generation_, November, 1910). As to what is possible under
German law by judicial decision since 1882, Hagen takes the case of a
widow who has living with her a daughter, aged twenty-five or thirty,
engaged to marry an artisan now living at a distance for the sake of his
work; he comes to see her when he can; she is already pregnant; they
will marry soon; one evening, with the consent of the widow, who looks
on the couple as practically married, he stays over-night, sharing his
betrothed's room, the only room available. Result: the old woman becomes
liable to four years' penal servitude, a fine of six thousand marks,
loss of civil rights, and police supervision.
[199] In another respect the French code carries private rights to an
excess by forbidding the unmarried mother to make any claim on the
father of her child. In most countries such a prohibition is regarded as
unreasonable and unjust. There is even a tendency (as by a recent Dutch
law) to compel the father to provide for his illegitimate child not on
the scale of the mother's social position but on the scale of his own
social position. This is, possibly, an undue assertion of the
superiority of man.
[200] The same point has lately been illustrated in Holland, where a
recent modification in the law is held to press harshly on homosexual
persons. At once a vigorous propaganda on behalf of the homosexual has
sprung into existence. We see here the difference between moral
enactments and criminal enactments. Supposing that a change in the law
had placed, for instance, increased difficulties in the way of burglary.
We should not witness any outburst of literary activity on behalf of
burglars, because the community, as a whole, is thoroughly convinced
that burglary ought to be penalized.
[201] Apart from the attitude towards immorality, we have an illustration
of the peculiarly English tendency to unite religious fervour with
individualism in Quakerism. In no other European country has any similar
movement--that is, a popular movement of individualistic mysticism--ever
appeared on the same scale.
[202] E.F. Fuld, Ph.D., _Police Administration_, 1909.
[203] Ex-Police Commissioner Bingham, of New York, estimated (_Hampton's
Magazine_, September, 1909) that "fifteen per cent. or from 1500 to 2000
members of the police force are unscrupulous 'grafters' whose hands are
always out for easy money." See also Report of the Committee of Fourteen
on _The Social Evil in New York City_, p. 34.
[204] Fuld, _op. cit._, pp. 373 _et seq._ This last opinion by no means
stands alone. Thus it is asserted by the Committee of Fourteen in their
Report on The _Social Evil in New York City_ (1910, p. xxxiv) that "some
laws exist to-day because an unintelligent, cowardly public puts
unenforceable statutes on the book, being content with registering their
hypocrisy."
[205] It is also a blundering policy. Its blind anathema is as likely as
not to fall on its own allies. Thus the Report of the municipally
appointed and municipally financed Vice Commission of Chicago is not
only an official but a highly moral document, advocating increased
suppression of immoral literature, and erring, if it errs, on the side
of over-severity. It has been suppressed by the United States Post
Office!
[206] This system applies only to spirits, not to beer and wine, but it
has proved very effective in diminishing drunkenness, as is admitted by
those who are opposed to the system. A somewhat similar system exists in
England under the name of the Trust system, but its extension appears
unfortunately to be much impeded by English laws and customs.
[207] Jacques Bertillon, in a paper read to the Académie des Sciences
Morales et Politiques, 30th September, 1911.
[208] During the present century a great wave of immorality and sexual
crime has been passing over Russia. This is not attributable to the
laws, old or new, but is due in part to the Russo-Japanese War, and in
part to the relaxed tension consequent on the collapse of the movement
for political reform. (See an article by Professor Asnurof, "La Crise
Sexuelle en Russie," _Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, April,
1911.)
[209] It was by this indirect influence that I was induced to write the
present chapter. The editor of a prominent German review wrote to me for
my opinion regarding a Bill dealing with the prevention of immorality
which had been introduced into the English Parliament and had aroused
much interest and anxiety in Germany, where it had been discussed in all
its details. But I had never so much as heard of the Bill, nor could I
find any one else who had heard of it, until I consulted a Member of
Parliament who happened to have been instrumental in causing its
rejection.
[210] J. Schrank, _Die Prostitution in Wien_, Bd. I, pp. 152-206.
[211] The history of this movement in Germany may be followed in the
_Vierteljahrsberichte des Wissenschaftlich-humanitären Komitees_, edited
by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, a great authority on the matter.
[212] Report on _The Social Evil in New York City_, p. 38; see also Rev
Dr. J.P. Peters, "Suppression of the 'Raines Law Hotels,'" _American
Academy of Political and Social Science_, November, 1908.
[213] It is probably needless to add that the specific object of the
Act--the Puritanic observance of Sunday--was by no means attained. On
Sunday, the 8th December, 1907, the police made a desperate attempt to
enforce the law; every place of amusement was shut up; lectures,
religious concerts, even the social meetings of the Young Men's
Christian Association, were rigorously put a stop to. There was, of
course, great popular indignation and uproar, and the impromptu
performances got up in the streets, while the police looked on
sympathetically, are said to have been far more outrageous than any
entertainment indoors could possibly have been.
[214] _The Social Evil in Chicago_, p. 112.
[215] The methods of Maria Theresa never had any success; the methods of
Calvin at Geneva had, however, a certain superficial success, because
the right conditions existed for their exercise. That is to say, that a
theocratic basis of society was generally accepted, and that the
suppression of immorality was regarded by the great mass of the
population, including in most cases, no doubt, even the offenders
themselves, as a religious duty. It is, however, interesting to note
that, even at Geneva, these "triumphs of morality" have met the usual
fate. At the present day, it appears (Edith Sellers, _Cornhill_, August,
1910), there are more disorderly houses in Geneva, in proportion to the
population, than in any other town in Europe.
[216] See e.g. P. Hausmeister, "Zur Analyse der Prostitution," _Geschlect
und Gesellschaft_, 1907, p. 294.
[217] Theodore Schroeder, _"Obscene" Literature and Constitutional Law_,
New York, 1911.
[218] Thus Sir Samuel Dill (_Roman Society_, p. 11) calls attention to the
letter of St. Paulinus who, when the Empire was threatened by
barbarians, wrote to a Roman soldier that Christianity is incompatible
with family life, with citizenship, with patriotism, and that soldiers
are doomed to eternal torment. Christians frequently showed no respect
for law or its representatives. "Many Christian confessors," says Sir
W.M. Ramsay (_The Church in the Roman Empire_, chap. xv), "went to
extremes in showing their contempt and hatred for their judges. Their
answers to plain questions were evasive and indirect; they lectured
Roman dignitaries as if the latter were the criminals and they
themselves the judges; and they even used violent reproaches and coarse,
insulting gestures." Bouché-Leclercq (_L'Intolérance Religieuse et le
Politique_, 1911, especially chap. X) shows how the early Christians
insisted on being persecuted. We see much the same attitude to-day among
anarchists of the lower class (and also, it may be added, sometimes
among suffragettes), who may be regarded as the modern analogues of the
early Christians.
[219] It may well be, indeed, that in all ages the actual sum of
immorality, broadly considered--in public and in private, in thought and
in act--undergoes but slight oscillations. But in the nature of its
manifestations and in the nature of the manifestations that accompany
it, there may be immense fluctuations. Tarde, the distinguished thinker,
referring to the "delicious Catholicism" of the days before Luther,
asks: "If that amiable Christian evolution had peacefully continued to
our days, should we be still more immoral than we are? It is doubtful,
but in all probability we should be enjoying the most æsthetic and the
least vexatious religion in the world, in which all our science, all our
civilization, would have been free to progress" (Tarde, _La Logique
Sociale_, p. 198). As has often been pointed out, it was along the lines
indicated by Erasmus, rather than along the lines pursued by Luther,
that the progress of civilization lay.
[220] Nietzsche, _Beyond Good and Evil_, chap. II. A century earlier
Godwin had written in his _Political Justice_ (Book VII, chap. VIII):
"Men are weak at present because they have always been told they are
weak and must not be trusted with themselves. Take them out of their
shackles, bid them enquire, reason, and judge, and you will soon find
them very different beings. Tell them that they have passions, are
occasionally hasty, intemperate, and injurious, but that they must be
trusted with themselves. Tell them that the mountains of parchment in
which they have been hitherto entrenched, are fit only to impose upon
ages of superstition and ignorance, that henceforth we will have no
dependence but upon their spontaneous justice; that, if their passions
be gigantic, they must rise with gigantic energy to subdue them; that if
their decrees be iniquitous, the iniquity shall be all their own."
X
THE WAR AGAINST WAR
Why the Problem of War is specially urgent To-day--The Beneficial
Effects of War in Barbarous Ages--Civilization renders the Ultimate
Disappearance of War Inevitable--The Introduction of Law in
disputes between Individuals involves the Introduction of Law in
disputes between Nations--But there must be Force behind Law--Henry
IV's Attempt to Confederate Europe--Every International Tribunal of
Arbitration must be able to enforce its Decisions--The Influences
making for the Abolition of Warfare--(1) Growth of International
Opinion--(2) International Financial Development--(3) The
Decreasing Pressure of Population--(4) The Natural Exhaustion of
the Warlike Spirit--(5) The Spread of Anti-military Doctrines--(6)
The overgrowth of Armaments--(7) The Dominance of Social
Reform--War Incompatible with an Advanced Civilization--Nations as
Trustees for Humanity--The Impossibility of Disarmament--The
Necessity of Force to ensure Peace--The Federated State of the
Future--The Decay of War still leaves the Possibilities of Daring
and Heroism.
There are, no doubt, special reasons why at the present time war and the
armaments of war should appear an intolerable burden which must be
thrown off as soon as possible if the task of social hygiene is not to
be seriously impeded. But the abolition of the ancient method of
settling international disputes by warfare is not a problem which
depends for its solution on the conditions of the moment. It is implicit
in the natural development of the process of civilization. At one stage,
no doubt, warfare plays an important part in constituting states and so,
indirectly, in promoting civilization. But civilization tends slowly
but surely to substitute for war in the later stages of this process the
methods of law, or, in any case, methods which, while not always
unobjectionable, avoid the necessity for any breach of the peace.[221] As
soon, indeed, as in primitive society two individuals engage in a
dispute which they are compelled to settle not by physical force but by
a resort to an impartial tribunal, the thin end of the wedge is
introduced, and the ultimate destruction of war becomes merely a matter
of time. If it is unreasonable for two individuals to fight it is
unreasonable for two groups of individuals to fight.[222]
The difficulty has been that while it is quite easy for an ordered
society to compel two individuals to settle their differences before a
tribunal, in accordance with abstractly determined principles of law and
reason, it is a vastly more difficult matter to compel two groups of
individuals so to settle their differences. A large part of the history
of all the great European countries has consisted in the progressive
conquest and pacification of small but often bellicose states outside,
and even inside, their own borders.[223] This is the case even within a
community. Hobbes, writing in the midst of a civil war, went so far as
to lay down that the "final cause" of a commonwealth is nothing else but
the abolition of "that miserable condition of war which is necessarily
consequent to the natural passions of men when there is no visible power
to keep them in awe." Yet we see to-day that even within our highly
civilized communities there is not always any adequately awful power to
prevent employers and employed from engaging in what is little better
than a civil war, nor even to bind them to accept the decision of an
impartial tribunal they may have been persuaded to appeal to. The
smallest state can compel its individual citizens to keep the peace; a
large state can compel a small state to do so; but hitherto there has
been no guarantee possible that large states, or even large compact
groups within the state, should themselves keep the peace. They commit
what injustice they please, for there is no visible power to keep them
in awe. We have attained a condition in which a state is able to enforce
a legal and peaceful attitude in its own individual citizens towards
each other. The state is the guardian of its citizens' peace, but the
old problem recurs: _Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_
It is obvious that this difficulty increases as the size of states
increases. To compel a small state to keep the peace by absorbing it if
it fails to do so is always an easy and even tempting process to a
neighbouring larger state. This process was once carried out on a
complete scale, when practically the whole known world was brought under
the sway of Rome. "War has ceased," Plutarch was able to declare in the
days of the Roman Empire, and, though himself an enthusiastic Greek, he
was unbounded in his admiration of the beneficence of the majestic _Pax
Romana_, and never tempted by any narrow spirit of patriotism to desire
the restoration of his own country's glories. But the Roman organization
broke up, and no single state will ever be strong enough to restore it.
Any attempt to establish orderly legal relationships between states
must, therefore, be carried out by the harmonious co-operation of those
states. At the end of the sixteenth century a great French statesman,
Sully, inspired Henry IV with a scheme of a Council of Confederated
European Christian States; each of these states, fifteen in number, was
to send four representatives to the Council, which was to sit at Metz or
Cologne and regulate the differences between the constituent states of
the Confederation. The army of the Confederation was to be maintained in
common, and used chiefly to keep the peace, to prevent one sovereign
from interfering with any other, and also, if necessary, to repel
invasion of barbarians from without. The scheme was arranged in concert
with Queen Elizabeth, and twelve of the fifteen Powers had already
promised their active co-operation when the assassination of Henry
destroyed the whole plan. Such a Confederation was easier to arrange
then than it is now, but probably it was more difficult to maintain, and
it can scarcely be said that at that date the times were ripe for so
advanced a scheme.[224]
To-day the interests of small states are so closely identified with
peace that it is seldom difficult to exert pressure on them to maintain
it. It is quite another matter with the large states. The fact that
during the past half century so much has been done by the larger states
to aid the cause of international arbitration, and to submit disputes to
international tribunals, shows how powerful the motives for avoiding war
are nowadays becoming. But the fact, also, that no country hitherto has
abandoned its liberty of withdrawing from peaceful arbitration any
question involving "national honour" shows that there is no constituted
power strong enough to control large states. For the reservation of
questions of national honour from the sphere of law is as absurd as
would be any corresponding limitation by individuals of their liability
for their acts before the law; it is as though a man were to say: "If I
commit a theft I am willing to appear before the court, and will
probably pay the penalty demanded; but if it is a question of murder,
then my vital interests are at stake, and I deny altogether the right of
the court to intervene." It is a reservation fatal to peace, and could
not be accepted if pleaded at the bar of any international tribunal with
the power to enforce its decisions. "Imagine," says Edward Jenks, in his
_History of Politics_, "a modern judge 'persuading' Mr. William Sikes to
'make it up' with the relatives of his victim, and, on his remaining
obdurate, leaving the two families to fight the matter out." Yet that is
what was in some degree done in England until medieval times as regards
individual crimes, and it is what is still done as regards national
crimes, in so far as the appeal to arbitration is limited and voluntary.
The proposals, therefore--though not yet accepted by any
Government--lately mooted in the United States, in England, and in
France, to submit international disputes, without reservation, to an
impartial tribunal represent an advance of peculiar significance.
The abolition of collective fighting is so desirable an extension of the
abolition of individual fighting, and its introduction has waited so
long the establishment of some high compelling power--for the influence
of the Religion of Peace has in this matter been less than nil--that it
is evident that only the coincidence of very powerful and peculiar
factors could have brought the question into the region of practical
politics in our own time. There are several such factors, most of which
have been developing during a long period, but none have been clearly
recognized until recent years. It may be worth while to indicate the
great forces now warring against war.
(1) _Growth of International Opinion._ There can be no doubt whatever
that during recent years, and especially in the more democratic
countries, an international consensus of public opinion has gradually
grown up, making itself the voice, like a Greek chorus, of an abstract
justice. It is quite true that of this justice, as of justice generally,
it may be said that it has wide limits. Renan declared once, in a famous
allocution, that "what is called indulgence is, most often, only
justice," and, at the other extreme, Remy de Gourmont has said that
"injustice is sometimes a part of justice;" in other words, there are
varying circumstances in which justice may properly be tempered either
with mercy or with severity. In any case, and however it may be
qualified; a popular international voice generously pronouncing itself
in favour of justice, and resonantly condemning any Government which
clashes against justice, is now a factor of the international situation.
It is, moreover, tending to become a factor having a certain influence
on affairs. This was the case during the South African War, when
England, by offending this international sense of justice, fell into a
discredit which had many actual unpleasant results and narrowly escaped,
there is some reason to believe, proving still more serious. The same
voice was heard with dramatically sudden and startling effect when
Ferrer was shot at Barcelona. Ferrer was a person absolutely unknown to
the man in the street; he was indeed little more than a name even to
those who knew Spain; few could be sure, except by a kind of intuition,
that he was the innocent victim of a judicial murder, for it is only now
that the fact is being slowly placed beyond dispute. Yet immediately
after Ferrer was shot within the walls of Monjuich a great shout of
indignation was raised, with almost magical suddenness and harmony,
throughout the civilized world, from Italy to Belgium, from England to
Argentina. Moreover, this voice was so decisive and so loud that it
acted like those legendary trumpet-blasts which shattered the walls of
Jericho; in a few days the Spanish Government, with a powerful minister
at its head, had fallen. The significance of this event we cannot easily
overestimate. For the first time in history, the voice of international
public opinion, unsupported by pressure, political, social, or
diplomatic, proved potent enough to avenge an act of injustice by
destroying a Government. A new force has appeared in the world, and it
tends to operate against those countries which are guilty of injustice,
whether that injustice is exerted against a State or even only against a
single obscure individual. The modern developments of telegraphy and the
Press--unfavourable as the Press is in many respects to the cause of
international harmony--have placed in the hands of peace this new weapon
against war.
(2) _International Financial Development._ There is another
international force which expresses itself in the same sense. The voice
of abstract justice raised against war is fortified by the voice of
concrete self-interest. The interests of the propertied classes, and
therefore of the masses dependent upon them, are to-day so widely
distributed throughout the world that whenever any country is plunged
into a disastrous war there arises in every other country, especially in
rich and prosperous lands with most at stake, a voice of self-interest
in harmony with the voice of justice. It is sometimes said that wars are
in the interest of capital, and of capital alone, and that they are
engineered by capitalists masquerading under imposing humanitarian
disguises. That is doubtless true to the extent that every war cannot
fail to benefit some section of the capitalistic world, which will
therefore favour it, but it is true to that extent only. The old notion
that war and the acquisition of territories encouraged trade by opening
up new markets has proved fallacious. The extension of trade is a matter
of tariffs rather than of war, and in any case the trade of a country
with its own acquisitions by conquest is a comparatively insignificant
portion of its total trade. But even if the financial advantages of war
were much greater than they are, they would be more than compensated by
the disadvantages which nowadays attend war. International financial
relationships have come to constitute a network of interests so vast, so
complicated, so sensitive, that the whole thrills responsively to any
disturbing touch, and no one can say beforehand what widespread damage
may not be done by shock even at a single point. When a country is at
war its commerce is at once disorganized, that is to say that its
shipping, and the shipping of all the countries that carry its freights,
is thrown out of gear to a degree that often cannot fail to be
internationally disastrous. Foreign countries cannot send in the imports
that lie on their wharves for the belligerent country, nor can they get
out of it the exports they need for their own maintenance or luxury.
Moreover, all the foreign money invested in the belligerent country is
depreciated and imperilled. The international voice of trade and finance
is, therefore, to-day mainly on the side of peace.
It must be added that this voice is not, as it might seem, a selfish
voice only. It is justifiable not only in immediate international
interests, but even in the ultimate interests of the belligerent
country, and not less so if that country should prove victorious. So far
as business and money are concerned, a country gains nothing by a
successful war, even though that war involves the acquisition of immense
new provinces; after a great war a conquered country may possess more
financial stability than its conqueror, and both may stand lower in this
respect than some other country which is internationally guaranteed
against war. Such points as these have of late been ably argued by
Norman Angell in his remarkable book, _The Great Illusion_, and for the
most part convincingly illustrated.[225] As was long since said, the
ancients cried, _Væ victis_! We have learnt to cry, _Væ victoribus_!
It may, indeed, be added that the general tendency of war--putting aside
peoples altogether lacking in stamina--is to moralize the conquered and
to demoralise the conquerors. This effect is seen alike on the material
and the spiritual sides. Conquest brings self-conceit and intolerance,
the reckless inflation and dissipation of energies. Defeat brings
prudence and concentration; it ennobles and fortifies. All the glorious
victories of the first Napoleon achieved less for France than the
crushing defeat of the third Napoleon. The triumphs left enfeeblement;
the defeat acted as a strong tonic which is still working beneficently
to-day. The corresponding reverse process has been at work in Germany:
the German soil that Napoleon ploughed yielded a Moltke and a
Bismarck,[226] while to-day, however mistakenly, the German Press is
crying out that only another war--it ought in honesty to say an
unsuccessful war--can restore the nation's flaccid muscle. It is yet
too early to see the results of the Russo-Japanese War, but already
there are signs that by industrial overstrain and the repression of
individual thought Japan is threatening to enfeeble the physique and to
destroy the high spirit of the indomitable men to whom she owed her
triumph.
(3) _The Decreasing Pressure of Population._ It was at one time commonly
said, and is still sometimes repeated, that the pressure of
over-population is the chief cause of wars. That is a statement which
requires a very great deal of qualification. It is, indeed, possible
that the great hordes of warlike barbarians from the North and the East
which invaded Europe in early times, sometimes more or less overwhelming
the civilized world, were the result of a rise in the birth-rate and an
excess of population beyond the means of subsistence. But this is far
from certain, for we know absolutely nothing concerning the birth-rate
of these invading peoples either before or during the period of their
incursions. Again, it is certain that, in modern times, a high and
rising birth-rate presents a favourable condition for war. A war
distracts attention from the domestic disturbances and economic
wretchedness which a too rapid growth of population necessarily
produces, while at the same time tending to draw away and destroy the
surplus population which causes this disturbance and wretchedness. Yet
there are other ways of meeting this over-population beside the crude
method of war. Social reform and emigration furnish equally effective
and much more humane methods of counteracting such pressure. No doubt
the over-population resulting from an excessively high birth-rate, when
not met, as it tends to be, by a correspondingly high death-rate from
disease, may be regarded as a predisposing cause of war, but to assert
that it is the pre-eminent cause is to go far beyond the evidence at
present available.
To whatever degree, however, it may have been potent in causing war in
the past, it is certain that the pressure of population as a cause of
war will be eliminated in the future. The only nations nowadays that can
afford to make war on the grand scale are the wealthy and civilized
nations. But civilization excludes a high birth-rate: there has never
been any exception to that law, nor can we conceive any exceptions, for
it is more than a social law; it is a biological law. Russia, a still
imperfectly civilized country, stands apart in having a very high
birth-rate, but it also has a very high death-rate, and even should it
happen that in Russia improved social conditions lower the death-rate
before affecting the birth-rate, there is still ample room within
Russian territory for the consequent increase of population. Among all
the other nations which are considered to threaten the world's peace,
the birth-rate is rapidly falling. This is so, for instance, as regards
England and Germany. Germany, especially, it was once thought--though in
actual fact Germany has not fought for over forty years--had an interest
in going to war in order to find an outlet for her surplus population,
compelled, in the absence of suitable German colonies, to sacrifice its
patriotism and lose its nationality by emigrating to foreign countries.
But the German birth-rate is falling, German emigration is decreasing,
and the immense growth of German industry is easily able to absorb the
new generation. Thus the declining birth-rate of civilized lands will
alone largely serve in the end to eliminate warfare, partly by removing
one of its causes, partly because the increased value of human life will
make war too costly.
(4) _The Natural Exhaustion of the Warlike Spirit._ It is a remarkable
tendency of the warlike spirit--frequently emphasized in recent years by
the distinguished zoologist, President D.S. Jordan, who here follows
Novikov[227]--that it tends to exterminate itself. Fighting stocks, and
peoples largely made up of fighting stocks, are naturally killed out,
and the field is left to the unwarlike. It is only the prudent, those
who fight and run away, who live to fight another day; and they transmit
their prudence to their offspring. Great Britain is a conspicuous
example of a land which, being an island, was necessarily peopled by
predatory and piratical invaders. A long series of warlike and
adventurous peoples--Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans--built
up England and imparted to it their spirit. The English were, it was
said, "a people for whom pain and death are nothing, and who only fear
hunger and boredom." But for over eight hundred years they have never
been reinforced by new invaders, and the inevitable consequences have
followed. There has been a gradual killing out of the warlike stocks, a
process immensely accelerated during the nineteenth century by a vast
emigration of the more adventurous elements in the population, pressed
out of the overcrowded country by the reckless and unchecked increase of
the population which occurred during the first three-quarters of that
century. The result is that the English (except sometimes when they
happen to be journalists) cannot now be described as a warlike people.
Old legends tell of British heroes who, when their legs were hacked
away, still fought upon the stumps. Modern poets feel that to picture a
British warrior of to-day in this attitude would be somewhat
far-fetched. The historian of the South African War points out, again
and again, that the British leaders showed a singular lack of the
fighting spirit. During that war English generals seldom cared to engage
the enemy's forces except when their own forces greatly outnumbered
them, and on many occasions they surrendered immediately they realized
that they were themselves outnumbered. Those reckless Englishmen who
boldly sailed out from their little island to face the Spanish Armada
were long ago exterminated; an admirably prudent and cautious race has
been left alive.
It is the same story elsewhere. The French long cherished the tradition
of military glory, and no country has fought so much. We see the result
to-day. In no country is the attitude of the intellectual classes so
calm and so reasonable on the subject of war, and nowhere is the popular
hostility to war so strongly marked.[228] Spain furnishes another instance
which is even still more decisive. The Spanish were of old a
pre-eminently warlike people, capable of enduring all hardships, never
fearing to face death. Their aggressively warlike and adventurous spirit
sent them to death all over the world. It cannot be said, even to-day,
that the Spaniards have lost their old tenacity and hardness of fibre,
but their passion for war and adventure was killed out three centuries
ago.
In all these and the like cases there has been a process of selective
breeding, eliminating the soldierly stocks and leaving the others to
breed the race. The men who so loved fighting that they fought till they
died had few chances of propagating their own warlike impulses. The men
who fought and ran away, the men who never fought at all, were the men
who created the new generation and transmitted to it their own
traditions.
This selective process, moreover, has not merely acted automatically; it
has been furthered by social opinion and social pressure, sometimes very
drastically expressed. Thus in the England of the Plantagenets there
grew up a class called "gentlemen"--not, as has sometimes been
supposed, a definitely defined class, though they were originally of
good birth--whose chief characteristic was that they were good fighting
men, and sought fortune by fighting. The "premier gentleman" of England,
according to Sir George Sitwell, and an entirely typical representative
of his class, was a certain glorious hero who fought with Talbot at
Agincourt, and also, as the unearthing of obscure documents shows, at
other times indulged in housebreaking, and in wounding with intent to
kill, and in "procuring the murder of one Thomas Page, who was cut to
pieces while on his knees begging for his life." There, evidently, was a
state of society highly favourable to the warlike man, highly
unfavourable to the unwarlike man whom he slew in his wrath. Nowadays,
however, there has been a revaluation of these old values. The cowardly
and no doubt plebeian Thomas Page, multiplied by the million, has
succeeded in hoisting himself into the saddle, and he revenges himself
by discrediting, hunting into the slums, and finally hanging, every
descendant he can find of the premier gentleman of Agincourt.
It must be added that the advocates of the advantages of war are not
entitled to claim this process of selective breeding as one of the
advantages of war. It is quite true that war is incompatible with a high
civilization, and must in the end be superseded. But this method of
suppressing it is too thorough. It involves not merely the extermination
of the fighting spirit, but of many excellent qualities, physical and
moral, which are associated with the fighting spirit. Benjamin Franklin
seems to have been the first to point out that "a standing army
diminishes the size and breed of the human species." Almost in
Franklin's lifetime that was demonstrated on a wholesale scale, for
there seems little reason to doubt that the size and stature of the
French nation have been permanently diminished by the constant levies of
young recruits, the flower of the population, whom Napoleon sent out to
death in their first manhood and still childless. Fine physical breed
involves also fine qualities of virility and daring which are needed for
other purposes than fighting. In so far as the selective breeding of war
kills these out, its results are imperfect, and could be better attained
by less radical methods.
(5) _The Growth of the Anti-Military Spirit._ The decay of the warlike
spirit by the breeding out of fighting stocks has in recent years been
reinforced by a more acute influence of which in the near future we
shall certainly hear more. This is the spirit of anti-militarism. This
spirit is an inevitable result of the decay of the fighting spirit. In a
certain sense it is also complementary to it. The survival of
non-fighting stocks by the destruction of the fighting stocks works most
effectually in countries having a professional army. The anti-military
spirit, on the contrary, works effectually in countries having a
national army in which it is compulsory for all young citizens to serve,
for it is only in such countries that the anti-militarist can, by
refusing to serve, take an influential position as a martyr in the cause
of peace.
Among the leading nations, it is in France that the spirit of
anti-militarism has taken the deepest hold of the people, though in
some smaller lands, notably among the obstinately peaceable inhabitants
of Holland, the same spirit also flourishes. Hervé, who is a leader of
the insurrectional socialists, as they are commonly called in opposition
to the purely parliamentary socialists led by Jaurès,--though the
insurrectional socialists also use parliamentary methods,--may be
regarded as the most conspicuous champion of anti-militarism, and many
of his followers have suffered imprisonment as the penalty of their
convictions. In France the peasant proprietors in the country and the
organized workers in the town are alike sympathetic to anti-militarism.
The syndicalists, or labour unionists with the Confédération Générale du
Travail as their central organization, are not usually anxious to
imitate what they consider the unduly timid methods of English trade
unionists;[229] they tend to be revolutionary and anti-military. The
Congress of delegates of French Trade Unions, held at Toulouse in 1910,
passed the significant resolution that "a declaration of war should be
followed by the declaration of a general revolutionary strike." The same
tendency, though in a less radical form, is becoming international, and
the great International Socialist Congress at Copenhagen has passed a
resolution instructing the International Bureau to "take the opinion of
the organized workers of the world on the utility of a general strike
in preventing war."[230] Even the English working classes are slowly
coming into line. At a Conference of Labour Delegates, held at Leicester
in 1911, to consider the Copenhagen resolution, the policy of the
anti-military general strike was defeated by only a narrow majority, on
the ground that it required further consideration, and might be
detrimental to political action; but as most of the leaders are in
favour of the strike policy there can be no doubt that this method of
combating war will shortly be the accepted policy of the English Labour
movement. In carrying out such a policy the Labour Party expects much
help from the growing social and political power of women. The most
influential literary advocate of the Peace movement, and one of the
earliest, has been a woman, the Baroness Bertha von Suttner, and it is
held to be incredible that the wives and mothers of the people will use
their power to support an institution which represents the most brutal
method of destroying their husbands and sons. "The cause of woman," says
Novikov, "is the cause of peace." "We pay the first cost on all human
life," says Olive Schreiner.[231]
The anti-militarist, as things are at present, exposes himself not only
to the penalty of imprisonment, but also to obloquy. He has virtually
refused to take up arms in defence of his country; he has sinned against
patriotism. This accusation has led to a counter-accusation directed
against the very idea of patriotism. Here the writings of Tolstoy, with
their poignant and searching appeals for the cause of humanity as
against the cause of patriotism, have undoubtedly served the
anti-militarists well, and wherever the war against war is being urged,
even so far as Japan, Tolstoy has furnished some of its keenest weapons.
Moreover, in so far as anti-militarism is advocated by the workers, they
claim that international interests have already effaced and superseded
the narrower interests of patriotism. In refusing to fight, the workers
of a country are simply declaring their loyalty to fellow-workers on the
other side of the frontier, a loyalty which has stronger claims on them,
they hold, than any patriotism which simply means loyalty to
capitalists; geographical frontiers are giving place to economic
frontiers, which now alone serve to separate enemies. And if, as seems
probable, when the next attempt is made at a great European war, the
order for mobilization is immediately followed in both countries by the
declaration of a general strike, there will be nothing to say against
such a declaration even from the standpoint of the narrowest patriotism,
although there may be much to say on other grounds against the policy of
the general strike.[232]
If we realize what is going on around us, it is easy to see that the
anti-militarist movement is rapidly reaching a stage when it will be
easily able, even unaided, to paralyse any war immediately and
automatically. The pioneers in the movement have played the same part as
was played in the seventeenth century by the Quakers. In the name of the
Bible and their own consciences, the Quakers refused to recognize the
right of any secular authority to compel them to worship or to fight;
they gained what they struggled for, and now all men honour their
memories. In the name of justice and human fraternity, the
anti-militarists are to-day taking the like course and suffering the
like penalties. To-morrow, they also will be revered as heroes and
martyrs.
(6) _The Over-growth of Armaments._ The hostile forces so far enumerated
have converged slowly on to war from such various directions that they
may be said to have surrounded and isolated it; its ultimate surrender
can only be a matter of time. Of late, however, a new factor has
appeared, of so urgent a character that it is fast rendering the
question of the abolition of war acute: the over-growth of armaments.
This is, practically, a modern factor in the situation, and while it is,
on the surface, a luxury due to the large surplus of wealth in great
modern states, it is also, if we look a little deeper, intimately
connected with that decay of the warlike spirit due to selective
breeding. It is the weak and timid woman who looks nervously under the
bed for the burglar who is the last person she really desires to meet,
and it is old, rich, and unwarlike nations which take the lead in
laboriously protecting themselves against enemies of whom there is no
sign in any quarter. Within the last half-century only have the nations
of the world begun to compete with each other in this timorous and
costly rivalry. In the warlike days of old, armaments in time of peace
consisted in little more than solid walls for defence, a supply of
weapons stored away here and there, sometimes in a room attached to the
parish church, and occasional martial exercises with the sword or the
bow, which were little more than an amusement. The true fighting man
trusted to his own strong right arm rather than to armaments, and
considered that he was himself a match for any half-dozen of the enemy.
Even in actual time of war it was often difficult to find either zeal or
money to supply the munitions of war. The _Diary_ of the industrious
Pepys, who achieved so much for the English navy, shows that the care of
the country's ships mainly depended on a few unimportant officials who
had the greatest trouble in the world to secure attention to the most
urgent and immediate needs.
A very difficult state of things prevails to-day. The existence of a
party having for its watchword the cry for retrenchment and economy is
scarcely possible in a modern state. All the leading political parties
in every great state--if we leave aside the party of Labour--are equally
eager to pile up the expenditure on armaments. It is the boast of each
party, not that it spends less, but more, than its rivals on this source
of expenditure, now the chief in every large state. Moreover, every new
step in expenditure involves a still further step; each new improvement
in attack or defence must immediately be answered by corresponding or
better improvements on the part of rival powers, if they are not to be
outclassed. Every year these moves and counter-moves necessarily become
more extensive, more complex, more costly; while each counter-move
involves the obsolescence of the improvements achieved by the previous
move, so that the waste of energy and money keeps pace with the
expenditure. It is well recognized that there is absolutely no possible
limit to this process and its constantly increasing acceleration.
There is no need to illustrate this point, for it is familiar to all.
Any newspaper will furnish facts and figures vividly exemplifying some
aspect of the matter. For while only a handful of persons in any country
are sincerely anxious under present conditions to reduce the colossal
sums every year wasted on the unproductive work of armament; an
increasing interest in the matter testifies to a vague alarm and anxiety
concerning the ultimate issue. For it is felt that an inevitable crisis
lies at the end of the path down which the nations are now moving.
Thus, from this point of view, the end of war is being attained by a
process radically opposite to that by which in the social as well as in
the physical organism ancient structures and functions are outgrown. The
usual process is a gradual recession to a merely vestigial state. But
here what may perhaps be the same ultimate result is being reached by
the more alarming method of over-inflation and threatening collapse. It
is an alarming process because those huge and heavily armed monsters of
primeval days who furnish the zoological types corresponding to our
modern over-armed states, themselves died out from the world when their
unwieldy armament had reached its final point of expansion. Will our own
modern states, one wonders, more fortunately succeed in escaping from
the tough hides that ever more closely constrict them, and finally save
their souls alive?
(7) _The Dominance of Social Reform._ The final factor in the situation
is the growing dominance of the process of social reform. On the one
hand, the increasing complexity of social organisation renders necessary
a correspondingly increasing expenditure of money in diminishing its
friction and aiding its elaboration; on the other hand, the still more
rapidly increasing demands of armament render it ever more difficult to
devote money to such social purposes. Everywhere even the most
elementary provision for the finer breeding and higher well-being of a
country's citizens is postponed to the clamour for ever new armaments.
The situation thus created is rapidly becoming intolerable.
It is not alone the future of civilization which is for ever menaced by
the possibility of war; the past of civilization, with all the precious
embodiments of its traditions, is even more fatally imperilled. As the
world grows older and the ages recede, the richer, the more precious,
the more fragile, become the ancient heirlooms of humanity. They
constitute the final symbols of human glory; they cannot be too
carefully guarded, too highly valued. But all the other dangers that
threaten their integrity and safety, if put together, do not equal war.
No land that has ever been a cradle of civilization but bears witness to
this sad truth. All the sacred citadels, the glories of
humanity,--Jerusalem and Athens, Rome and Constantinople,--have been
ravaged by war, and, in every case, their ruin has been a disaster that
can never be repaired. If we turn to the minor glories of more modern
ages, the special treasure of England has been its parish churches, a
treasure of unique charm in the world and the embodiment of the
people's spirit: to-day in their battered and irreparable condition they
are the monuments of a Civil War waged all over the country with
ruthless religious ferocity. Spain, again, was a land which had stored
up, during long centuries, nearly the whole of its accumulated
possessions in every art, sacred and secular, of fabulous value, within
the walls of its great fortress-like cathedrals; Napoleon's soldiers
over-ran the land, and brought with them rapine and destruction; so that
in many a shrine, as at Montserrat, we still can see how in a few days
they turned a Paradise into a desert. It is not only the West that has
suffered. In China the rarest and loveliest wares and fabrics that the
hand of man has wrought were stored in the Imperial Palace of Pekin; the
savage military hordes of the West broke in less than a century ago and
recklessly trampled down and fired all that they could not loot. In
every such case the loss is final; the exquisite incarnation of some
stage in the soul of man that is for ever gone is permanently
diminished, deformed, or annihilated.
At the present time all civilized countries are becoming keenly aware of
the value of their embodied artistic possessions. This is shown, in the
most decisive manner possible, by the enormous prices placed upon them.
Their pecuniary value enables even the stupidest and most unimaginative
to realize the crime that is committed when they are ruthlessly and
wantonly destroyed. Nor is it only the products of ancient art which
have to-day become so peculiarly valuable. The products of modern
science are only less valuable. So highly complex and elaborate is the
mechanism now required to ensure progress in some of the sciences that
enormous sums of money, the most delicate skill, long periods of time,
are necessary to produce it. Galileo could replace his telescope with
but little trouble; the destruction of a single modern observatory would
be almost a calamity to the human race.
Such considerations as these are, indeed, at last recognized in all
civilized countries. The engines of destruction now placed at the
service of war are vastly more potent than any used in the wars of the
past. On the other hand, the value of the products they can destroy is
raised in a correspondingly high degree. But a third factor is now
intervening. And if the museums of Paris or the laboratories of Berlin
were threatened by a hostile army it would certainly be felt that an
international power, if it existed, should be empowered to intervene, at
whatever cost to national susceptibilities, in order to keep the peace.
Civilization, we now realize, is wrought out of inspirations and
discoveries which are for ever passed and repassed from land to land; it
cannot be claimed by any individual land. A nation's art-products and
its scientific activities are not mere national property; they are
international possessions, for the joy and service of the whole world.
The nations hold them in trust for humanity. The international force
which will inspire respect for that truth it is our business to create.
The only question that remains--and it is a question the future alone
will solve--is the particular point at which this ancient and overgrown
stronghold of war, now being invested so vigorously from so many sides,
will finally be overthrown, whether from within or from without, whether
by its own inherent weakness, by the persuasive reasonableness of
developing civilization, by the self-interest of the commercial and
financial classes, or by the ruthless indignation of the proletariat.
That is a problem still insoluble, but it is not impossible that some
already living may witness its solution.
Two centuries ago the Abbé de Saint-Pierre set forth his scheme for a
federation of the States of Europe, which meant, at that time, a
federation of all the civilised states of the world. It was the age of
great ideas, scattered abroad to germinate in more practical ages to
come. The amiable Abbé enjoyed all the credit of his large and
philanthropic conceptions. But no one dreamed of realizing them, and the
forces which alone could realize them had not yet appeared above the
horizon.[233] In this matter, at all events, the world has progressed,
and a federation of the States of the world is no longer the mere
conception of a philosophic dreamer. The first step will be taken when
two of the leading countries of the world--and it would be most
reasonable for the states having the closest community of origin and
language to take the initiative--resolve to submit all their differences
without reserve to arbitration. As soon as a third power of magnitude
joined this federation the nucleus would be constituted of a world
state. Such a state would be able to impose peace on even the most
recalcitrant outside states, for it would furnish that "visible power to
keep them in awe," which Hobbes rightly declared to be indispensable; it
could even, in the last resort, if necessary, enforce peace by war. Thus
there might still be war in the world. But there would be no wars that
were not Holy Wars. There are other methods than war of enforcing peace,
and these such a federation of great states would be easily able to
bring to bear on even the most warlike of states, but the necessity of a
mighty armed international force would remain for a long time to come.
To suppose, as some seem to suppose, that the establishment of
arbitration in place of war means immediate disarmament is an idle
dream. At Conferences of the English Labour Party on this question, the
most active opposition to the proposed strike method for rendering war
impossible comes from the delegates representing the workers in arsenals
and dockyards. But there is no likelihood of arsenals and dockyards
closing in the lifetime of the present workers, and though the
establishment of peaceful methods of settling international disputes
cannot fail to diminish the number of the workers who live by armament,
it will be long before they can be dispensed with altogether.
[1] The Abbé de Saint-Pierre (1658-1743), a churchman without vocation,
was a Norman of noble family, and first published his _Mémoires pour
rendre la Paix Perpetuelle à l'Europe_ in 1722. As Siégler-Pascal well
shows (_Les Projets de l'Abbé dé Saint-Pierre_, 1900) he was not a mere
visionary Utopian, but an acute and far-seeing thinker, practical in his
methods, a close observer, an experimentalist, and one of the first to
attempt the employment of statistics. He was secretary to the French
plenipotentiaries who negotiated the Treaty of Utrecht, and was thus
probably put on the track of his scheme. He proposed that the various
European states should name plenipotentiaries to form a permanent
tribunal of compulsory arbitration for the settlement of all
differences. If any state took up arms against one of the allies, the
whole confederation would conjointly enter the field, at their conjoint
expense, against the offending state. He was opposed to absolute
disarmament, an army being necessary to ensure peace, but it must be a
joint army composed of contingents from each Power in the confederation.
Saint-Pierre, it will be seen, had clearly grasped the essential facts
of the situation as we see them to-day. "The author of _The Project of
Perpetual Peace_" concludes Prof. Pierre Robert in a sympathetic summary
of his career (Petit de Julleville, _Histoire de la Langue et de la
Littérature Française_, Vol. VI), "is the precursor of the twentieth
century." His statue, we cannot doubt, will be a conspicuous object,
beside Sully's, on the future Palace of any international tribunal.
It is, indeed, so common to regard the person who points out the
inevitable bankruptcy of war under highly civilized conditions as a mere
Utopian dreamer, that it becomes necessary to repeat, with all the
emphasis necessary, that the settlement of international disputes by law
cannot be achieved by disarmament, or by any method not involving force.
All law, even the law that settles the disputes of individuals, has
force behind it, and the law that is to settle the disputes between
nations cannot possibly be effective unless it has behind it a mighty
force. I have assumed this from the outset in quoting the dictum of
Hobbes, but the point seems to be so easily overlooked by the loose
thinker that it is necessary to reiterate it. The necessity of force
behind the law ordering international relations has, indeed, never been
disputed by any sagacious person who has occupied himself with the
matter. Even William Penn, who, though a Quaker, was a practical man of
affairs, when in 1693 he put forward his _Essay Towards the Present and
Future Peace of Europe by the Establishment of a European Diet,
Parliament or Estate_, proposed that if any imperial state refused to
submit its pretensions to the sovereign assembly and to abide by its
decisions, or took up arms on its own behalf, "all the other
sovereignties, united as one strength, shall compel the submission and
performance of the sentence, with damages to the suffering party, and
charges to the sovereignties that obliged their submission." In
repudiating some injudicious and hazardous pacificist considerations put
forth by Novikov, the distinguished French philosopher, Jules de
Gaultier, points out that law has no rights against war save in force,
on which war itself bases its rights. "Force _in abstracto_ creates
right. It is quite unimaginable that a right should exist which has not
been affirmed at some moment as a reality, that is to say a force....
What we glorify under the name of right is only a more intense and
habitual state of force which we oppose to a less frequent form of
force."[234] The old Quaker and the modern philosopher are thus at one
with the practical man in rejecting any form of pacification which rests
on a mere appeal to reason and justice.
[1] Jules de Gaultier, "Comment Naissent les Dogmes," _Mercure de
France_, 1st Sept., 1911. Jules de Gaultier also observes that "conflict
is the law and condition of all existence." That may be admitted, but it
ceases to be true if we assume, as the same thinker assumes, that
"conflict" necessarily involves "war." The establishment of law to
regulate the disputes between individuals by no means suppresses
conflict, but it suppresses fighting, and it ensures that if any
fighting occur the aggressor shall not profit by his aggression. In the
same way the existence of a tribunal to regulate the disputes between
national communities of individuals can by no means suppress conflict;
but unless it suppresses fighting, and unless it ensures that if
fighting occurs the aggressor shall not profit by his aggression, it
will have effected nothing.
It cannot be said that the progress of civilization has so far had any
tendency to render unnecessary the point of view adopted by Penn and
Jules de Gaultier. The acts of states to-day are apt to be just as
wantonly aggressive as they ever were, as reckless of reason and of
justice. There is no country, however high it may stand in the comity of
nations, which is not sometimes carried away by the blind fever of war.
France, the land of reason, echoed, only forty years ago, with the mad
cry, "À Berlin!" England, the friend of the small nationalities,
jubilantly, with even an air of heroism, crushed under foot the little
South African Republics, and hounded down every Englishman who withstood
the madness of the crowd. The great, free intelligent people of the
United States went to war against Spain with a childlike faith in the
preposterous legend of the blowing up of the _Maine_. There is no
country which has not some such shameful page in its history, the record
of some moment when its moral and intellectual prestige was besmirched
in the eyes of the whole world. It pays for its momentary madness, it
may valiantly strive to atone for its injustice, but the damaging record
remains. The supersession of war is needed not merely in the interests
of the victims of aggression; it is needed fully as much in the
interests of the aggressors, driven by their own momentary passions, or
by the ambitious follies of their rulers, towards crimes for which a
terrible penalty is exacted. There has never been any country at every
moment so virtuous and so wise that it has not sometimes needed to be
saved from itself. For every country has sometimes gone mad, while
every other country has looked on its madness with the mocking calm of
clear-sighted intelligence, and perhaps with a pharisaical air of
virtuous indignation.
During the single year of 1911 the process was unrolled in its most
complete form. The first bad move--though it was a relatively small and
inoffensive move--was made by France. The Powers, after much
deliberation, had come to certain conclusions concerning Morocco, and
while giving France a predominant influence in that country, had
carefully limited her power of action. But France, anxious to increase
her hold on the land, sent out, with the usual pretexts, an unnecessary
expedition to Fez. Had an international tribunal with an adequate force
behind it been in existence, France would have been called upon to
justify her action, and whether she succeeded or failed in such
justification, no further evils would have occurred. But there was no
force able or willing to call France to account, and the other Powers
found it a simpler plan to follow her example than to check it. In
pursuance of this policy, Germany sent a warship to the Moroccan port of
Agadir, using the same pretext as the French, with even less
justification. When the supreme military power of the world wags even a
finger the whole world is thrown into a state of consternation. That
happened on the present occasion, though, as a matter of fact, giants
are not given to reckless violence, and Germany, far from intending to
break the world's peace, merely used her power to take advantage of
France's bad move. She agreed to condone France's mistake, and to resign
to her the Moroccan rights to which neither country had the slightest
legitimate claim, in return for an enormous tract of land in another
part of Africa. Now, so far, the game had been played in accordance with
rules which, though by no means those of abstract justice, were fairly
in accordance with the recognized practices of nations. But now another
Power was moved to far more openly unscrupulous action. It has long been
recognized that if there must be a partition of North Africa, Italy's
share is certainly Tripoli. The action of France and of Germany stirred
up in Italy the feeling that now or never was the moment for action, and
with brutal recklessness, and the usual pretexts, now flimsier than
ever, Italy made war on Turkey, without offer of mediation, in flagrant
violation of her own undertakings at the Hague Peace Convention of 1899.
There was now only one Mohammedan country left to attack, and it was
Russia's turn to make the attack. Northern Persia--the most civilized
and fruitful half of Persia--had been placed under the protection of
Russia, and Russia, after cynically doing her best to make good
government in Persia impossible, seized on the pretext of the bad
government to invade the country. If the Powers of Europe had wished to
demonstrate the necessity for a great international tribunal, with a
mighty force behind it to ensure the observance of its decisions, they
could not have devised a more effective demonstration.
Thus it is that there can be no question of disarmament at present, and
that there can be no effective international tribunal unless it has
behind it an effective army. A great army must continue to exist apart
altogether from the question as to whether the army in itself is a
school of virtue or of vice. Both these views of its influence have been
held in extreme forms, and both seem to be without any great
justification. On this point we may perhaps accept the conclusion of
Professor Guérard, who can view the matter from a fairly impartial
standpoint, having served in the French army, closely studied the life
of the people in London, and occupied a professorial chair in
California. He denies that an army is a school of all the vices, but he
is also unable to see that it exercises an elevating influence on any
but the lowest: "A regiment is not much worse than a big factory.
Factory life in Europe is bad enough; military service extends its evils
to agricultural labourers, and also to men who would otherwise have
escaped these lowering influences. As for traces of moral uplift in the
army, I have totally failed to notice any. War may be a stern school of
virtue; barrack life is not. Honour, duty, patriotism, are feelings
instilled at school; they do not develop, but often deteriorate, during
the term of compulsory service."[235]
But, as we have seen, and as Guérard admits, it is probable that wars
will be abolished generations before armies are suppressed. The question
arises what we are to do with our armies. There seem to be at least two
ways in which armies may be utilized, as we may already see in France,
and perhaps to some slight extent in England. In the first place, the
army may be made a great educational agency, an academy of arts and
sciences, a school of citizenship. In the second place, armies are
tending to become, as William James pointed out, the reserve force of
peace, great organized unemployed bodies of men which can be brought
into use during sudden emergencies and national disasters. Thus the
French army performed admirable service during the great Seine floods a
few years ago, and both in France and in England the army has been
called upon to help to carry on public duties indispensable to the
welfare of the nation during great strikes, though here it would be
unfortunate if the army came to be regarded as a mere strike-breaking
corps. Along these main lines, however, there are, as Guérard has
pointed out, signs of a transformation which, while preserving armies
for international use, yet point to a compromise between the army and
modern democracy.
It is feared by some that the reign of universal peace will deprive them
of the opportunity of exhibiting daring and heroism. Without inquiring
too carefully what use has been made of their present opportunities by
those who express this fear, it must be said that such a fear is
altogether groundless. There are an infinite number of positions in life
in which courage is needed, as much as on a battlefield, though, for the
most part, with less risk of that total annihilation which in the past
has done so much to breed out the courageous stocks. Moreover, the
certain establishment of peace will immensely enlarge the scope for
daring and adventure in the social sphere. There are departments in the
higher breeding and social evolution of the race--some perhaps even
involving questions of life and death--where the highest courage is
needed. It would be premature to discuss them, for they can scarcely
enter the field of practical politics until war has been abolished. But
those persons who are burning to display heroism may rest assured that
the course of social evolution will offer them every opportunity.
FOOTNOTES:
[221] The respective parts of war and law in the constitution of states
are clearly and concisely set forth by Edward Jenks in his little
primer, _A History of Politics_. Steinmetz, who argues in favour of the
preservation of the method of war, in his book _Die Philosophie des
Krieges_ (p. 303) states that "not a single element of the warlike
spirit, not one of the psychic conditions of war, is lacking to the
civilized European peoples of to-day." That may well be, although there
is much reason to believe that they have all very considerably
diminished. Such warlike spirit as exists to-day must be considerably
discounted by the fact that those who manifest it are not usually the
people who would actually have to do the fighting. It is more important
to point out (as is done in a historical sketch of warfare by A.
Sutherland, _Nineteenth Century_, April, 1899) that, as a matter of
fact, war is becoming both less frequent and less ferocious. In England,
for instance, where at one period the population spent a great part of
their time in fighting, there has practically been no war for two and a
half centuries. When the ancient Germans swept through Spain (as
Procopius, who was an eye-witness, tells) they slew every human being
they met, including women and children, until millions had perished. The
laws of war, though not always observed, are constantly growing more
humane, and Sutherland estimates that warfare is now less than
one-hundredth part as destructive as it was in the early Middle Ages.
[222] This inevitable extension of the sphere of law from the settlement
of disputes between individuals to disputes between individual states
has been pointed out before, and is fairly obvious. Thus
Mougins-Roquefort, a French lawyer, in his book _De la Solution
Juridique des Conflits Internationaux_ (1889), observes that in the
days of the Roman Empire, when there was only one civilized state, any
system of international relationships was impossible, but that as soon
as we have a number of states forming units of international society
there at once arises the necessity for a system of international
relationships, just as some system of social order is necessary to
regulate the relations of any community of individuals.
[223] In England, a small and compact country, this process was completed
at a comparatively early date. In France it was not until the days of
Louis XV (in 1756) that the "last feudal brigand," as Taine calls the
Marquis de Pleumartin in Poitou, was captured and beheaded.
[224] France, notwithstanding her military aptitude, has always taken the
pioneering part in the pacific movement of civilization. Even at the
beginning of the fourteenth century France produced an advocate of
international arbitration, Pierre Dubois (Petrus de Bosco), the Norman
lawyer, a pupil of Thomas Aquinas. In the seventeenth century Emeric
Crucé proposed, for the first time, to admit all peoples, without
distinction of colour or religion, to be represented at some central
city where every state would have its perpetual ambassador, these
representatives forming an assembly to adjudicate on international
differences (Dubois and Crucé have lately been studied by Prof.
Vesnitch, _Revue d'Histoire Diplomatique_, January, 1911). The history
of the various peace projects generally has been summarily related by
Lagorgette in _Le Rôle de la Guerre_, 1906, Part IV, chap. VI.
[225] The same points had previously been brought forward by others,
although not so vigorously enforced. Thus the well-known Belgian
economist and publicist, Emile de Laveleye, pointed out (_Pall Mall
Gazette_, 4th August, 1888) that "the happiest countries are
incontestably the smallest: Switzerland, Norway, Luxembourg, and still
more the Republics of San Marino and Val d'Andorre"; and that "countries
in general, even when victorious, do not profit by their conquests."
[226] Bismarck himself declared that without the deep shame of the German
defeat at Jena in 1806 the revival of German national feeling would have
been impossible.
[227] D. Starr Jordan, The Human Harvest, 1907; J. Novikov, La Guerre et
ses Prétendus Bienfaits, 1894, chap. IV; Novikov here argued that the
selection of war eliminates not the feeble but the strong, and tends to
produce, therefore, a survival of the unfittest.
[228] "The most demoralizing features in French military life," says
Professor Guérard, a highly intelligent observer, "are due to an
incontestable progress in the French mind--its gradual loss of faith and
interest in military glory. Henceforth the army is considered as
useless, dangerous, a burden without a compensation. Authors of school
books may be censured for daring to print such opinions, but the great
majority of the French hold them in their hearts. Nay, there is a
prevailing suspicion among working men that the military establishment
is kept up for the sole benefit of the capitalists, and the reckless use
of troops in case of labour conflicts gives colour to the contention."
It has often happened that what the French think to-day the world
generally thinks to-morrow. There is probably a world-wide significance
in the fact that French experience is held to show that progress in
intelligence means the demoralization of the army.
[229] The influence of Syndicalism has, however, already reached the
English Labour Movement, and an ill-advised prosecution by the English
Government must have immensely aided in extending and fortifying that
influence.
[230] Some small beginnings have already been made. "The greatest gain
ever yet won for the cause of peace," writes Mr. H.W. Nevinson, the
well-known war correspondent (_Peace and War in the Balance_, p. 47),
"was the refusal of the Catalonian reservists to serve in the war
against the Riff mountaineers of Morocco in July, 1909.... So Barcelona
flared to heaven, and for nearly a week the people held the vast city. I
have seen many noble, as well as many terrible, events, but none more
noble or of finer promise than the sudden uprising of the Catalan
working people against a dastardly and inglorious war, waged for the
benefit of a few speculators in Paris and Madrid."
[231] J. Novikov, _Le Fédération de l'Europe_, chap. iv. Olive Schreiner,
_Woman and Labour_, chap. IV. While this is the fundamental fact, we
must remember that we cannot generalize about the ideas or the feelings
of a whole sex, and that the biological traditions of women have been
associated with a primitive period when they were the delighted
spectators of combats. "Woman," thought Nietzsche, "is essentially
unpeaceable, like the cat, however well she may have assumed the
peaceable demeanour." Steinmetz (_Philosophie des Krieges_, p. 314),
remarking that women are opposed to war in the abstract, adds: "In
practice, however, it happens that women regard a particular war--and
all wars are particular wars--with special favour"; he remarks that the
majority of Englishwomen fully shared the war fever against the Boers,
and that, on the other side, he knew Dutch ladies in Holland, very
opposed to war, who would yet have danced with joy at that time on the
news of a declaration of war against England.
[232] The general strike, which has been especially developed by the
syndicalist Labour movement, and is now tending to spread to various
countries, is a highly powerful weapon, so powerful that its results are
not less serious than those of war. To use it against war seems to be to
cast out Beelzebub by Beelzebub. Even in Labour disputes the modern
strike threatens to become as serious and, indeed, almost as sanguinary
as the civil wars of ancient times. The tendency is, therefore, in
progressive countries, as we see in Australia, to supersede strikes by
conciliation and arbitration, just as war is tending to be superseded by
international tribunals. These two aims are, however, absolutely
distinct, and the introduction of law into the disputes between nations
can have no direct effect on the disputes between social classes. It is
quite possible, however, that it may have an indirect effect, and that
when disputes between nations are settled in an orderly manner, social
feeling will forbid disputes between classes to be settled in a
disorderly manner.
[233] The Abbé de Saint-Pierre (1658-1743), a churchman without vocation,
was a Norman of noble family, and first published his Mémoires pour
rendre la Paix Perpetuelle à l'Europe in 1722. As Siégler-Pascal well
shows (Les Projets de l'Abbé dé Saint-Pierre, 1900) he was not a mere
visionary Utopian, but an acute and far-seeing thinker, practical in his
methods, a close observer, an experimentalist, and one of the first to
attempt the employment of statistics. He was secretary to the French
plenipotentiaries who negotiated the Treaty of Utrecht, and was thus
probably put on the track of his scheme. He proposed that the various
European states should name plenipotentiaries to form a permanent
tribunal of compulsory arbitration for the settlement of all
differences. If any state took up arms against one of the allies, the
whole confederation would conjointly enter the field, at their conjoint
expense, against the offending state. He was opposed to absolute
disarmament, an army being necessary to ensure peace, but it must be a
joint army composed of contingents from each Power in the confederation.
Saint-Pierre, it will be seen, had clearly grasped the essential facts
of the situation as we see them to-day. "The author of The Project of
Perpetual Peace" concludes Prof. Pierre Robert in a sympathetic summary
of his career (Petit de Julleville, Histoire de la Langue et de la
Littérature Française, Vol. VI), "is the precursor of the twentieth
century." His statue, we cannot doubt, will be a conspicuous object,
beside Sully's, on the future Palace of any international tribunal.
[234] Jules de Gaultier, "Comment Naissent les Dogmes," Mercure de
France, 1st Sept., 1911. Jules de Gaultier also observes that "conflict
is the law and condition of all existence." That may be admitted, but it
ceases to be true if we assume, as the same thinker assumes, that
"conflict" necessarily involves "war." The establishment of law to
regulate the disputes between individuals by no means suppresses
conflict, but it suppresses fighting, and it ensures that if any
fighting occur the aggressor shall not profit by his aggression. In the
same way the existence of a tribunal to regulate the disputes between
national communities of individuals can by no means suppress conflict;
but unless it suppresses fighting, and unless it ensures that if
fighting occurs the aggressor shall not profit by his aggression, it
will have effected nothing.
[235] A.L. Guérard, "Impressions of Military Life in France," _Popular
Science Monthly_, April, 1911.
XI
THE PROBLEM OF AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE
Early Attempts to Construct an International Language--The Urgent
Need of an Auxiliary Language To-day--Volapük--The Claims of
Spanish--Latin--The Claims of English--Its Disadvantages--The
Claims of French--Its Disadvantages--The Modern Growth of National
Feeling opposed to Selection of a Natural Language--Advantages of
an Artificial Language--Demands it must fulfil--Esperanto--Its
Threatened Disruption--The International Association for the
adoption of an Auxiliary International Language--The First Step to
Take.
Ever since the decay of Latin as the universal language of educated
people, there have been attempts to replace it by some other medium of
international communication. That decay was inevitable; it was the
outward manifestation of a movement of individualism which developed
national languages and national literatures, and burst through the
restraining envelope of an authoritarian system expounded in an official
language. This individualism has had the freest play, and we are not
likely to lose all that it has given us. Yet as soon as it was achieved
the more distinguished spirits in every country began to feel the need
of counterbalancing it. The history of the movement may be said to begin
with Descartes, who in 1629 wrote to his friend Mersenne that it would
be possible to construct an artificial language which could be used as
an international medium of communication. Leibnitz, though he had solved
the question for himself, writing some of his works in Latin and others
in French, was yet all his life more or less occupied with the question
of a universal language. Other men of the highest distinction--Pascal,
Condillac, Voltaire, Diderot, Ampère, Jacob Grimm--have sought or
desired a solution to this problem.[236] None of these great men, however,
succeeded even in beginning an attempt to solve the problem they were
concerned with.
Some forty years ago, however, the difficulty began again to be felt,
this time much more keenly and more widely than before. The spread of
commerce, the facility of travel, the ramifications of the postal
service, the development of new nationalities and new literatures, have
laid upon civilized peoples a sense of burden and restriction which
could never have been felt by their forefathers in the previous century.
Added to this, a new sense of solidarity had been growing up in the
world; the financial and commercial solidarity, by which any disaster or
disturbance in one country causes a wave of disaster or disturbance to
pass over the whole civilized globe, was being supplemented by a sense
of spiritual solidarity. Men began to realize that the tasks of
civilization cannot be carried out except by mutual understanding and
mutual sympathy among the more civilized nations, that every nation has
something to learn from other nations, and that the bonds of
international intercourse must thus be drawn closer. This feeling of the
need of an international language led in America to several serious
attempts to obtain a consensus of opinion among scientific men regarding
an international language. Thus in 1888 the Philosophical Society of
Philadelphia, the oldest of American learned societies, unanimously
resolved, on the initiative of Brinton, to address a letter to learned
societies throughout the world, asking for their co-operation in
perfecting a language for commercial and learned purposes, based on the
Aryan vocabulary and grammar in their simplest forms, and to that end
proposing an international congress, the first meeting of which should
be held in Paris or London. In the same year Horatio Hale read a paper
on the same subject before the American Association for the Advancement
of Science. A little later, in 1890, it was again proposed at a meeting
of the same Association that, in order to consider the question of the
construction and adoption of a symmetrical and scientific language, a
congress should be held, delegates being in proportion to the number of
persons speaking each language.
These excellent proposals seem, however, to have borne little fruit. It
is always an exceedingly difficult matter to produce combined action
among scientific societies even of the same nation. Thus the way has
been left open for individuals to adopt the easier but far less decisive
or satisfactory method of inventing a new language by their own unaided
exertions. Certainly over a hundred such languages have been proposed
during the past century. The most famous of these was undoubtedly
Volapük, which was invented in 1880 by Schleyer, a German-Swiss priest
who knew many languages and had long pondered over this problem, but who
was not a scientific philologist; the actual inception of the language
occurred in a dream. Volapük was almost the first real attempt at an
organic language capable of being used for the oral transmission of
thought. On this account, no doubt, it met with great and widespread
success; it was actively taken up by a professor at Paris, societies
were formed for its propagation, journals and hundreds of books were
published in it; its adherents were estimated at a million. But its
success, though brilliant, was short-lived. In 1889, when the third
Volapük Congress was held, it was at the height of its success, but
thereafter dissension arose, and its reputation suddenly collapsed. No
one now speaks Volapük; it is regarded as a hideous monstrosity, even by
those who have the most lively faith in artificial languages. Its
inventor has outlived his language, and, like it, has been forgotten by
the world, though his achievement was a real step towards the solution
of the problem.
The collapse of Volapük discouraged thoughtful persons from expecting
any solution of the problem in an artificial language. It seemed
extremely improbable that any invented language, least of all the
unaided product of a single mind, could ever be generally accepted, or
be worthy of general acceptance, as an international mode of
communication. Such a language failed to carry the prestige necessary to
overcome the immense inertia which any attempt to adopt it would meet
with. Invented languages, the visionary schemes of idealists, apparently
received no support from practical men of affairs. It seemed to be among
actual languages, living or dead, that we might most reasonably expect
to find a medium of communication likely to receive wide support. The
difficulty then lay in deciding which language should be selected.
Russian had sometimes been advocated as the universal language for
international purposes, and it is possible to point to the enormous
territory of Russia, its growing power and the fact that Russian is the
real or official language of a larger number of people than any other
language except English. But Russian is so unlike the Latin and Teutonic
tongues, used by the majority of European peoples; it is so complicated,
so difficult to acquire, and, moreover, so lacking in concision that it
has never had many enthusiastic advocates.
The virtues and defects of Spanish, which has found many enthusiastic
supporters, are of an opposite character. It is an admirably vigorous
and euphonious language, on a sound phonetic basis, every letter always
standing for a definite sound; the grammar is simple and exceptionally
free from irregularities, and it is the key to a great literature.
Billroth, the distinguished Austrian surgeon, advocated the adoption of
Spanish; he regarded English as really more suitable, but, he pointed
out, it is so difficult for the Latin races to speak non-Latin tongues
that a Romance language is essential, and Spanish is the simplest and
most logical of the Romance tongues.[237] It is, moreover, spoken by a
vast number of people in South America and elsewhere.
A few enthusiasts have advocated Greek, and have supported their claim
with the argument that it is still a living language. But although Greek
is the key to a small but precious literature, and is one of the sources
of latter-day speech and scientific terminology, it is difficult, it is
without special adaptation to modern uses, and there are no adequate
reasons why it should be made an international language.
Latin cannot be dismissed quite so hastily. It has in its favour the
powerful argument that it has once already been found adequate to serve
as the universal language. There is a widespread opinion to-day among
the medical profession--the profession most actively interested in the
establishment of a universal language--that Latin should be adopted, and
before the International Medical Congress at Rome in 1894, a petition to
this effect was presented by some eight hundred doctors in India.[238] It
is undoubtedly an admirable language, expressive, concentrated, precise.
But the objections are serious. The relative importance of Latin to-day
is very far from what it was a thousand years ago, for conditions have
wholly changed. There is now no great influence, such as the Catholic
Church was of old, to enforce Latin, even if it possessed greater
advantages. And the advantages are very mixed. Latin is a wholly dead
tongue, and except in a degenerate form not by any means an easy one to
learn, for its genius is wholly opposed to the genius even of those
modern languages which are most closely allied to it. The world never
returns on its own path. Although the prestige of Latin is still
enormous, a language could only be brought from death to life by some
widespread motor force; such a force no longer exists behind Latin.
There remain English and French, and these are undoubtedly the two
natural languages most often put forward--even outside England and
France--as possessing the best claims for adoption as auxiliary
international mediums of communication.
English, especially, was claimed by many, some twenty years ago, to be
not merely the auxiliary language of the future, but the universal
language which must spread all over the world and supersede and drive
out all others by a kind of survival of the fittest. This notion of a
universal language is now everywhere regarded as a delusion, but at that
time there was still thought by many to be a kind of special procreative
activity in the communities of Anglo-Saxon origin which would naturally
tend to replace all other peoples, both the people and the language
being regarded as the fittest to survive.[239] English was, however,
rightly felt to be a language with very great force behind it, being
spoken by vast communities possessing a peculiarly energetic and
progressive temperament, and with much power of peaceful penetration in
other lands. It is generally acknowledged also that English fully
deserves to be ranked as one of the first of languages by its fine
aptitude for powerful expression, while at the same time it is equally
fitted for routine commercial purposes. The wide extension of English
and its fine qualities have often been emphasized, and it is unnecessary
to dwell on them here. The decision of the scientific societies of the
world to use English for bibliographical purposes is not entirely a
tribute to English energy in organization, but to the quality of the
language. One finds, indeed, that these facts are widely recognized
abroad, in France and elsewhere, though I have noted that those who
foretell the conquest of English, even when they are men of intellectual
distinction and able to read English, are often quite unable to speak it
or to understand it when spoken.
That brings us to a point which is overlooked by those who triumphantly
pointed to the natural settlement of this question by the swamping of
other tongues in the overflowing tide of English speech. English is the
most concise and laconic of the great languages. Greek, French and
German are all more expansive, more syllabically copious. Latin alone
may be said to equal, or surpass English in concentration, because,
although Latin words are longer on the average, by their greater
inflection they cover a larger number of English words. This power of
English to attain expression with a minimum expenditure of energy in
written speech is one of its chief claims to succeed Latin as the
auxiliary international language. But it furnishes no claim to
preference for actual speaking, in which this economy of energy ceases
to be a supreme virtue, since here we have also to admit the virtues of
easy intelligibility and of persuasiveness. Greek largely owed its
admirable fitness for speech to the natural richness and prolongation of
its euphonious words, which allowed the speaker to attain the legitimate
utterance of his thought without pauses or superfluous repetition.
French, again, while by no means inapt for concentration, as the
_pensée_ writers show, most easily lends itself to effects that are
meant for speech, as in Bossuet, or that recall speech, as in Mme de
Sevigné in one order of literature, or Renan in another. But at Rome, we
feel, the spoken tongue had a difficulty to overcome, and the
mellifluously prolonged rhetoric of Cicero, delightful as it may be,
scarcely seems to reveal to us the genius of the Latin tongue. The
inaptitude of English for the purposes of speech is even more
conspicuous, and is again well illustrated in our oratory. Gladstone was
an orator of acknowledged eloquence, but the extreme looseness and
redundancy into which his language was apt to fall in the effort to
attain the verbose richness required for the ends of spoken speech,
reveals too clearly the poverty of English from this point of view. The
same tendency is also illustrated by the vain re-iterations of ordinary
speakers. The English intellect, with all its fine qualities, is not
sufficiently nimble for either speaker or hearer to keep up with the
swift brevity of the English tongue. It is a curious fact that Great
Britain takes the lead in Europe in the prevalence of stuttering; the
language is probably a factor in this evil pre-eminence, for it appears
that the Chinese, whose language is powerfully rhythmic, never stutter.
One authority has declared that "no nation in the civilized world speaks
its language so abominably as the English." We can scarcely admit that
this English difficulty of speech is the result of some organic defect
in English nervous systems; the language itself must be a factor in the
matter. I have found, when discussing the point with scientific men and
others abroad, that the opinion prevails that it is usually difficult to
follow a speaker in English. This experience may, indeed, be considered
general. While an admirably strong and concise language, English is by
no means so adequate in actual speech; it is not one of the languages
which can be heard at a long distance, and, moreover, it lends itself in
speaking to so many contractions that are not used in writing--so many
"can'ts" and "won'ts" and "don'ts," which suit English taciturnity, but
slur and ruin English speech--that English, as spoken, is almost a
different language from that which excites admiration when written. So
that the exclusive use of English for international purposes would not
be the survival of the fittest so far as a language for speaking
purposes is concerned.
Moreover, it must be remembered that English is not a democratic
language. It is not, like the chief Romance languages and the chief
Teutonic languages, practically homogeneous, made out of one block. It
is formed by the mixture of two utterly unlike elements, one
aristocratic, the other plebeian. Ever since the Norman lord came over
to England a profound social inequality has become rooted in the very
language. In French, _boeuf_ and _mouton_ and _veau_ and _porc_ have
always been the same for master and for man, in the field and on the
table; the animal has never changed its plebeian name for an
aristocratic name as it passed through the cook's hands. That example is
typical of the curious mark which the Norman Conquest left on our
speech, rendering it so much more difficult for us than for the French
to attain equality of social intercourse. Inequality is stamped
indelibly into our language as into no other great language. Of course,
from the literary point of view, that is all gain, and has been of
incomparable aid to our poets in helping them to reach their most
magnificent effects, as we may see conspicuously in Shakespeare's
enormous vocabulary. But from the point of view of equal social
intercourse, this wealth of language is worse than lost, it is
disastrous. The old feudal distinctions are still perpetuated; the "man"
still speaks his "plain Anglo-Saxon," and the "gentleman" still speaks
his refined Latinized speech. In every language, it is true, there are
social distinctions in speech, and every language has its slang. But in
English these distinctions are perpetuated in the very structure of the
language. Elsewhere the working-class speak--with a little difference in
the quality--a language needing no substantial transformation to become
the language of society, which differs from it in quality rather than in
kind. But the English working man feels the need to translate his common
Anglo-Saxon speech into foreign words of Latin origin. It is difficult
for the educated person in England to understand the struggle which the
uneducated person goes through to speak the language of the educated,
although the unsatisfactory result is sufficiently conspicuous. But we
can trace the operation of a similar cause in the hesitancy of the
educated man himself when he attempts to speak in public and is
embarrassed by the search for the set of words most suited for dignified
purposes.
Most of those who regarded English as the coming world-language admitted
that it would require improvement for general use. The extensive and
fundamental character of the necessary changes is not, however,
realized. The difficulties of English are of four kinds: (1) its special
sounds, very troublesome for foreigners to learn to pronounce, and the
uncertainty of its accentuation; (2) its illogical and chaotic spelling,
inevitably leading to confusions in pronunciation; (3) the grammatical
irregularities in its verbs and plural nouns; and (4) the great number
of widely different words which are almost or quite similar in
pronunciation. A vast number of absurd pitfalls are thus prepared for
the unwary user of English. He must remember that the plural of "mouse"
is "mice," but that the plural of "house" is not "hice," that he may
speak of his two "sons," but not of his two "childs"; he will
indistinguishably refer to "sheeps" and "ships"; and like the preacher a
little unfamiliar with English who had chosen a well-known text to
preach on, he will not remember whether "plough" is pronounced "pluff"
or "plo,"[240] and even a phonetic spelling system would render still more
confusing the confusion between such a series of words as "hair,"
"hare," "heir," "are," "ere" and "eyre." Many of these irregularities
are deeply rooted in the structure of the language; it would be an
extremely difficult as well as extensive task to remove them, and when
the task was achieved the language would have lost much of its character
and savour; it would clash painfully with literary English.
Thus even if we admitted that English ought to be the international
language of the future, the result is not so satisfactory from a British
point of view as is usually taken for granted. All other civilized
nations would be bilingual; they would possess the key not only to their
own literature, but to a great foreign literature with all the new
horizons that a foreign literature opens out. The English-speaking
countries alone would be furnished with only one language, and would
have no stimulus to acquire any other language, for no other language
would be of any practical use to them. All foreigners would be in a
position to bring to the English-speaking man whatever information they
considered good for him. At first sight this seems a gain for the
English-speaking peoples, because they would thus be spared a certain
expenditure of energy; but a very little reflection shows that such a
saving of energy is like that effected by the intestinal parasitic worm
who has digested food brought ready to his mouth. It leads to
degeneracy. Not the people whose language is learnt, but the people who
learn a language reap the benefit, spiritual and material. It is now
admitted in the commercial world that the ardour of the Germans in
learning English has brought more advantage to the Germans than to the
English. Moreover, the high intellectual level of small nations at the
present time is due largely to the fact that all their educated members
must be familiar with one or two languages besides their own. The great
defect of the English mind is insularity; the virtue of its boisterous
energy is accompanied by lack of insight into the differing virtues of
other peoples. If the natural course of events led to the exclusive use
of English for international communication, this defect would be still
more accentuated. The immense value of becoming acquainted with a
foreign language is that we are thereby led into a new world of
tradition and thought and feeling. Before we know a new language truly,
we have to realize that the words which at first seem equivalent to
words in our own language often have a totally different atmosphere, a
different rank or dignity from that which they occupy in our own
language. It is in learning this difference in the moral connotation of
a language and its expression in literature that we reap the real
benefit of knowing a foreign tongue. There is no other way--not even
residence in a foreign land if we are ignorant of the language--to take
us out of the customary circle of our own traditions. It imparts a
mental flexibility and emotional sympathy which no other discipline can
yield. To ordain that all non-English-speaking peoples should learn
English in addition to their mother tongue, and to render it practically
unnecessary for English-speakers (except the small class of students) to
learn any other language, would be to confer an immense boon on the
first group of peoples, doubling their mental and emotional capacity; it
is to render the second group hidebound.
When we take a broad and impartial survey of the question we thus see
that there is reason to believe that, while English is an admirable
literary language (this is the ground that its eulogists always take),
and sufficiently concise for commercial purposes, it is by no means an
adequate international tongue, especially for purposes of oral speech,
and, moreover, its exclusive use for this purpose would be a misfortune
for the nations already using it, since they would be deprived of that
mental flexibility and emotional sympathy which no discipline can give
so well as knowledge of a living foreign tongue.
Many who realized these difficulties put forward French as the auxiliary
international language. It is quite true that the power behind French is
now relatively less than it was two centuries ago.[241] At that time
France by its relatively large population, the tradition of its military
greatness, and its influential political position, was able to exert an
immense influence; French was the language of intellect and society in
Germany, in England, in Russia, everywhere in fact. During the
eighteenth century internal maladministration, the cataclysm of the
Revolution, and finally the fatal influence of Napoleon alienated
foreign sympathy, and France lost her commanding position. Yet it was
reasonably felt that, if a natural language is to be used for
international purposes, after English there is no practicable
alternative to French.
French is the language not indeed in any special sense of science or of
commerce, but of the finest human culture. It is a well-organized
tongue, capable of the finest shades of expression, and it is the key to
a great literature. In most respects it is the best favoured child of
Latin; it commends itself to all who speak Romance languages, and, as
Alphonse de Candolle has remarked, a Spaniard and an Italian know
three-quarters of French beforehand, and every one who has learnt Latin
knows half of French already. It is more admirably adapted for speaking
purposes than perhaps any other language which has any claim to be used
for international purposes, as we should expect of the tongue spoken by
a people who have excelled in oratory, who possess such widely diffused
dramatic ability, and who have carried the arts of social intercourse to
the highest point.
Paris remains for most people the intellectual capital of Europe; French
is still very generally used for purposes of intercommunication
throughout Europe, while the difficulty experienced by all but Germans
and Russians in learning English is well known. Li Hung Chang is
reported to have said that, while for commercial reasons English is far
more widely used in China than French, the Chinese find French a much
easier language to learn to speak, and the preferences of the Chinese
may one day count for a good deal--in one direction or another--in the
world's progress. One frequently hears that the use of French for
international purposes is decaying; this is a delusion probably due to
the relatively slow growth of the French-speaking races and to various
temporary political causes. It is only necessary to look at the large
International Medical Congresses. Thus at one such Congress at Rome, at
which I was present, over six thousand members came from forty-two
countries of the globe, and over two thousand of them took part in the
proceedings. Four languages (Italian, French, German and English) were
used at this Congress. Going over the seven large volumes of
Transactions, I find that fifty-nine communications were presented in
English, one hundred and seventy-one in German, three hundred and one
in French, the rest in Italian. The proportion of English communications
to German is thus a little more than one to three, and the proportion of
English to French less than one to six. Moreover, the English-speaking
members invariably (I believe) used their own language, so that these
fifty-nine communications represent the whole contribution of the
English-speaking world. And they represent nothing more than that;
notwithstanding the enormous spread of English, of which we hear so
much, not a single non-English speaker seems to have used English. It
might be supposed that this preponderance of French was due to a
preponderance of the French element, but this was by no means the case;
the members of English-speaking race greatly exceeded those of
French-speaking race. But, while the English communications represented
the English-speaking countries only, and the German communications were
chiefly by German speakers, French was spoken not only by members
belonging to the smaller nations of Europe, from the north and from the
south, by the Russians, by most of the Turkish and Asiatic members, but
also by all the Mexicans and South Americans. These figures may not be
absolutely free from fallacy, due to temporary causes of fluctuation.
But that they are fairly exact is shown by the results of the following
Congress, held at Moscow. If I take up the programme for the department
of psychiatry and nervous disease, in which I was myself chiefly
interested, I find that of 131 communications, 80 were in French, 37 in
German and 14 in English. This shows that French, German and English
bear almost exactly the same relation to one another as at Rome. In
other words, 61 per cent of the speakers used French, 28 per cent
German, and only 11 per cent English.
If we come down to one of the most recent International Medical
Congresses, that of Lisbon in 1906, we find that the supremacy of
French, far from weakening, is more emphatically affirmed. The language
of the country in which the Congress was held was ruled out, and I find
that of 666 contributions to the proceedings of the Congress, over 84
per cent were in French, scarcely more than 8 per cent in English, and
less than 7 per cent in German. At the subsequent Congress at Budapesth
in 1909, the French contributions were to the English as three to one.
Similar results are shown by other International Congresses. Thus at the
third International Congress of Psychology, held at Munich, there were
four official languages, and on grounds of locality the majority of
communications were in German; French followed with 29, Italian with 12,
and English brought up the rear with 11. Dr. Westermarck, who is the
stock example of the spread of English for international purposes, spoke
in German. It is clearly futile to point to figures showing the prolific
qualities of English races; the moral quality of a race and its language
counts, as well as mere physical capacity for breeding, and the moral
influence of French to-day is immensely greater than that of English.
That is, indeed, scarcely a fair statement of the matter in view of the
typical cases just quoted; one should rather say that, as a means of
spoken international communication for other than commercial purposes,
English is nowhere.
There is one other point which serves to give prestige to French: its
literary supremacy in the modern world. While some would claim for the
English the supreme poetic literature, there can be no doubt that the
French own the supreme prose literature of modern Europe. It was felt by
those who advocated the adoption of English or French that it would
surely be a gain for human progress if the auxiliary international
languages of the future should be one, if not both, of two that possess
great literatures, and which embody cultures in some respects allied,
but in most respects admirably supplementing each other.[242]
The collapse of Volapük stimulated the energy of those who believed that
the solution of the question lay in the adoption of a natural language.
To-day, however, there are few persons who, after carefully considering
the matter, regard this solution as probable or practicable.[243]
Considerations of two orders seem now to be decisive in rejecting the
claims of English and French, or, indeed, any other natural language, to
be accepted as an international language: (1) The vast number of
peculiarities, difficulties, and irregularities, rendering necessary so
revolutionary a change for international purposes that the language
would be almost transformed into an artificial language, and perhaps not
even then an entirely satisfactory one. (2) The extraordinary
development during recent years of the minor national languages, and the
jealousy of foreign languages which this revival has caused. This latter
factor is probably alone fatal to the adoption of any living language.
It can scarcely be disputed that neither English nor French occupies
to-day so relatively influential a position as it once occupied. The
movement against the use of French in Roumania, as detrimental to the
national language, is significant of a widespread feeling, while, as
regards English, the introduction by the Germans into commerce of the
method of approaching customers in their own tongue, has rendered
impossible the previous English custom of treating English as the
general language of commerce.
The natural languages, it became realized, fail to answer to the
requirements which must be made of an auxiliary international language.
The conditions which have to be fulfilled are thus formulated by Anna
Roberts:[244]
"_First_, a vocabulary having a maximum of internationality in its
root-words for at least the Indo-European races, living or bordering on
the confines of the old Roman Empire, whose vocabularies are already
saturated with Greek and Latin roots, absorbed during the long centuries
of contact with Greek and Roman civilization. As the centre of gravity
of the world's civilization now stands, this seems the most rational
beginning. Such a language shall then have:
"_Second_, a grammatical structure stripped of all the irregularities
found in every existing tongue, and that shall be simpler than any of
them. It shall have:
"_Third_, a single, unalterable sound for each letter, no silent
letters, no difficult, complex, shaded sounds, but simple primary
sounds, capable of being combined into harmonious words, which latter
shall have but a single stress accent that never shifts.
"_Fourth_, mobility of structure, aptness for the expression of complex
ideas, but in ways that are grammatically simple, and by means of words
that can easily be analysed without a dictionary.
"_Fifth_, it must be capable of being, not merely a literary
language,[245] but a spoken tongue, having a pronunciation that can be
perfectly mastered by adults through the use of manuals, and in the
absence of oral teachers.
"_Finally_, and as a necessary corollary and complement to all of the
above, this international auxiliary language must, to be of general
utility, be exceedingly easy of acquisition by persons of but moderate
education, and hitherto conversant with no language but their own."
Thus the way was prepared for the favourable reception of a new
artificial language, which had in the meanwhile been elaborated. Dr.
Zamenhof, a Russian physician living at Warsaw, had been from youth
occupied with the project of an international language, and in 1887 he
put forth in French his scheme for a new language to be called
Esperanto. The scheme attracted little notice; Volapük was then at the
zenith of its career, and when it fell, its fall discredited all
attempts at an artificial language. But, like Volapük, Esperanto found
its great apostle in France. M. Louis de Beaufront brought his high
ability and immense enthusiasm to the work of propaganda, and the
success of Esperanto in the world is attributed in large measure to him.
The extension of Esperanto is now threatening to rival that of Volapük.
Many years ago Max Müller, and subsequently Skeat, notwithstanding the
philologist's prejudice in favour of natural languages, expressed their
approval of Esperanto, and many persons of distinction, moving in such
widely remote spheres as Tolstoy and Sir William Ramsay, have since
signified their acceptance and their sympathy. Esperanto Congresses are
regularly held, Esperanto Societies and Esperanto Consulates are
established in many parts of the world, a great number of books and
journals are published in Esperanto, and some of the world's classics
have been translated into it.
It is generally recognized that Esperanto represents a great advance on
Volapük. Yet there are already signs that Esperanto is approaching the
climax of its reputation, and that possibly its inventor may share the
fate of the inventor of Volapük and outlive his own language. The most
serious attack on Esperanto has come from within. The most intelligent
Esperantists have realized the weakness and defects of their language
(in some measure due to the inevitable Slavonic prepossessions of its
inventor) and demand radical reforms, which the conservative party
resist. Even M. de Beaufront, to whom its success was largely due, has
abandoned primitive Esperanto, and various scientific men of high
distinction in several countries now advocate the supersession of
Esperanto by an improved language based upon it and called Ido.
Professor Lorenz, who is among the advocates of Ido, admits that
Esperanto has shown the possibility of a synthetic language, but states
definitely that "according to the concordant testimony of all unbiased
opinions" Esperanto in no wise represents the final solution of the
problem. This new movement is embodied in the Délégation pour l'Adoption
d'une Langue Auxiliaire Internationale, founded in Paris during the
International Exhibition in 1900 by various eminent literary and
scientific men, and having its head-quarters in Paris. The Délégation
consider that the problem demands a purely scientific and technical
solution, and it is claimed that 40 per cent of the stems of Ido are
common to six languages: German, English, French, Italian, Russian and
Spanish. The Délégation appear to have approached the question with a
fairly open mind, and it was only after study of the subject that they
finally reached the conclusion that Esperanto contained a sufficient
number of good qualities to furnish a basis on which to work.[246]
The general programme of the Délégation is that (1) an auxiliary
international language is required, adapted to written and oral language
between persons of different mother tongues; (2) such language must be
capable of serving the needs of science, daily life, commerce, and
general intercourse, and must be of such a character that it may easily
be learnt by persons of average elementary education, especially those
of civilized European nationality; (3) the decision to rest with the
International Association of Academies, and, in case of their refusal,
with the Committee of the Délégation.[247]
The Délégation is seeking to bring about an official international
Congress which would either itself or through properly appointed experts
establish an internationally and officially recognized auxiliary
language. The chief step made in this direction has been the formation
at Berne in 1911 of an international association whose object is to take
immediate steps towards bringing the question before the Governments of
Europe. The Association is pledged to observe a strict neutrality in
regard to the language to be chosen.
The whole question seems thus to have been placed on a sounder basis
than hitherto. The international language of the future cannot be, and
ought not to be, settled by a single individual seeking to impose his
own invention on the world. This is not a matter for zealous propaganda
of an almost religious character. The hasty and premature adoption of
some privately invented language merely retards progress. No individual
can settle the question by himself. What we need is calm study and
deliberation between the nations and the classes chiefly concerned,
acting through the accredited representatives of their Governments and
other professional bodies. Nothing effective can be done until the
pressure of popular opinion has awakened Governments and scientific
societies to the need for action. The question of international
arbitration has become practical; the question of the international
language ought to go hand in hand with that of international
arbitration. They are closely allied and both equally necessary.
While the educational, commercial, and official advantages of an
auxiliary international language are obvious, it seems to me that from
the standpoint of social hygiene there are at least three interests
which are especially and deeply concerned in the settlement of this
question.
The first and chief is that of international democracy in its efforts to
attain an understanding on labour questions. There can be no solution of
this question until a simpler mode of personal communication has become
widely prevalent. This matter has from time to time already been brought
before international labour congresses, and those who attend such
congresses have doubtless had occasion to realize how essential it is.
Perhaps it is a chief factor in the comparative failure of such
congresses hitherto.
Science represents the second great interest which has shown an active
concern in the settlement of this question. To follow up any line of
scientific research is already a sufficiently gigantic work, on account
of the absence of proper bibliographical organization; it becomes almost
overwhelming now that the search has to extend over at least half a
dozen languages, and still leaves the searcher a stranger to the
important investigations which are appearing in Russian and in Japanese,
and will before long appear in other languages. Sir Michael Foster once
drew a humorous picture of the woes of the physiologist owing to these
causes. In other fields--especially in the numerous branches of
anthropological research, as I can myself bear witness--the worker is
even worse off than the physiologist. Just now science is concentrating
its energies on the organization of bibliography, but much attention has
been given to this question of an international language from time to
time, and it is likely before long to come pressingly to the front.
The medical profession is also practically concerned in this question;
hitherto it has, indeed, taken a more lively interest in the effort to
secure an international language than has pure science. It is of the
first importance that new discoveries and methods in medicine and
hygiene should be rendered immediately accessible; while the now
enormously extended domain of medicine is full of great questions which
can only be solved by international co-operation on an international
basis. The responsibility of advocating a number of measures affecting
the well-being of communities lies, in the first place, with the medical
profession; but no general agreement is possible without full facilities
for discussion in international session. This has been generally
recognized; hence the numerous attempts to urge a single language on the
organizers of the international medical congresses. I have already
observed how large and active these congresses were. Yet it cannot be
said that any results are achieved commensurate with the world-wide
character of such congresses. Partly this is due to the fact that the
organizers of international congresses have not yet learnt what should
be the scope of such conferences, and what they may legitimately hope to
perform; but very largely because there is no international method of
communication; and, except for a few seasoned cosmopolitans, no truly
international exchange of opinions takes place. This can only be
possible when we have a really common and familiar method of
intercommunication.
These three interests--democratic, scientific, medical--seem at present
those chiefly concerned in the task of putting this matter on a definite
basis, and it is much to be desired that they should come to some common
agreement. They represent three immensely important modes of social and
intellectual activity, and the progress of every nation is bound up with
an international progress of which they are now the natural pioneers. It
cannot be too often repeated that the day has gone by when any progress
worthy of the name can be purely national. All the most vital questions
of national progress tend to merge themselves into international
questions. But before any question of international progress can result
in anything but noisy confusion, we need a recognized mode of
international intelligence and communication. That is why the question
of the auxiliary international language is of actual and vital interest
to all who are concerned with the tasks of social hygiene.
THE QUESTION ON INTERNATIONAL COINAGE
It must be remembered that the international auxiliary language is an
organic part of a larger internationalization which must inevitably be
effected, and is indeed already coming into being. Two related measures
of intercommunication are an international system of postage stamps, and
an international coinage, to which may be added an international system
of weights and measures, which seems to be already in course of
settlement by the increasingly general adoption of the metric system.
The introduction of the exchangeable international stamp coupon
represents the beginning of a truly international postal system; but it
is only a beginning. If a completely developed international postal
system were incidentally to deliver some nations, and especially the
English, from the depressingly ugly postage stamps they are now
condemned to use, this reform would possess a further advantage almost
as great as its practical utility. An international coinage is, again, a
prime necessity, which would possess immense commercial advantages in
addition to the great saving of trouble it would effect. The progress of
civilization is already working towards an international coinage. In an
interesting paper on this subject ("International Coinage," _Popular
Science Monthly_, March, 1910) T.F. van Wagenen writes; "Each in its
way, the great commercial nations of the day are unconsciously engaged
in the task. The English shilling is working northwards from the Cape
of Good Hope, has already come in touch with the German mark and the
Portuguese peseta which have been introduced on both the east and west
sides of the Continent, and will in due time meet the French franc and
Italian lira coming south from the shores of the Mediterranean. In Asia,
the Indian rupee, the Russian rouble, the Japanese yen, and the
American-Philippine coins are already competing for the patronage of the
Malay and the Chinaman. In South America neither American nor European
coins have any foot-hold, the Latin-American nations being well supplied
by systems of their own, all related more or less closely to the coinage
of Mexico or Portugal. Thus the plainly evolutionary task of pushing
civilization into the uneducated parts of the world through commerce is
as badly hampered by the different coins offered to the barbarian as are
the efforts of the evangelists to introduce Christianity by the
existence of the various denominations and creeds. The Church is
beginning to appreciate the wastage in its efforts, and is trying to
minimize it by combinations among the denominations having for their
object to standardize Christianity, so to speak, by reducing tenet and
dogma to the lowest possible terms. Commerce must do the same. The white
man's coins must be standardized and simplified.... The international
coin will come in a comparatively short time, just as will arrive the
international postage stamp, which, by the way, is very badly needed.
For the upper classes of all countries, the people who travel, and have
to stand the nuisance and loss of changing their money at every
frontier, the bankers and international merchants who have to cumber
their accounts with the fluctuating item of exchange between commercial
centres will insist upon it. All the European nations, with the
exception of Russia and Turkey, are ready for the change, and when these
reach the stage of real constitutionalism in their progress upward,
they will be compelled to follow, being already deeply in debt to the
French, English, and Germans. Japan may be counted upon to acquiesce
instantly in any unit agreed upon by the rest of the civilized world."
This writer points out that the opening out of the uncivilized parts of
the world to commerce will alone serve to make an international coinage
absolutely indispensable.
Without, however, introducing a really new system, an auxiliary
international money system (corresponding to an auxiliary international
language) could be introduced as a medium of exchange without
interfering with the existing coinages of the various nations. Réné de
Saussure (writing in the _Journal de Genève_, in 1907) has insisted on
the immense benefit such a system of "monnaie de compte" would be in
removing the burden imposed upon all international financial relations
by the diversity of money values. He argues that the best point of union
would be a gold piece of eight grammes--almost exactly equivalent to one
pound, twenty marks, five dollars, and twenty-five francs--being, in
fact, but one-third of a penny different from the value of a pound
sterling. For the subdivisions the point of union must be decimally
divided, and M. de Saussure would give the name of speso to a
ten-thousandth part of the gold coin.
FOOTNOTES:
[236] The history of the efforts to attain a universal language has been
written by Couturat and Leau, _Histoire de la Langue Universelle_, 1903.
[237] The distinguished French physician, Dr. Sollier, also, in an address
to the Lisbon International Medical Congress, on "La Question de la
Langue Auxiliaire Internationale," in 1906, advocating the adoption of
one of the existing Romance tongues, said: "Spanish is the simplest of
all and the easiest, and if it were chosen for this purpose I should be
the first to accept it."
[238] It has even been stated by a distinguished English man of science
that Latin is sometimes easier for the English to use than is their own
language. "I have known Englishmen who could be trusted to write a more
intelligible treatise, possibly even to make a more lucid speech, in
Latin than in English," says Dr. Miers, the Principal of London
University (_Lancet_, 7th October, 1911), and he adds: "Quite seriously,
I think some part of the cause is to be sought in the difficulty of our
language, and many educated persons get lost in its intricacies, just as
they get lost in its spelling." Without questioning the fact, however, I
would venture to question this explanation of it.
[239] Thus in one article on the growing extension of the English language
throughout the world (_Macmillan's Magazine_, March, 1892) we read:
"English is practically certain to become the language of the world....
The speech of Shakespeare and Milton, of Dryden and Swift, of Byron and
Wordsworth, will be, in a sense in which no other language has been, the
speech of the whole world." We do not nowadays meet with these wild
statements.
[240] The stumbling-stones for the foreigner presented by English words in
"ough" have often been referred to, and are clearly set forth in the
verses in which Mr. C.B. Loomis has sought to represent a French
learner's experiences--and the same time to show the criminal impulses
which these irregularities arouse in the pupil.
"I'm taught p-l-o-u-g-h
Shall be pronouncèd 'plow,'
'Zat's easy when you know,' I say,
'Mon Anglais I'll get through.'
"My teacher say zat in zat case
O-u-g-h is 'oo,'
And zen I laugh and say to him
'Zees Anglais make me cough.'
"He say, 'Not coo, but in zat word
O-u-g-h is "off,"'
Oh, _sacre bleu_! such varied sounds
Of words make me hiccough!
"He say, 'Again, mon friend ees wrong!
O-u-g-h is "up,"
In hiccough,' Zen I cry, 'No more,
You make my throat feel rough,'
"'Non! non!' he cry, 'you are not right--
O-u-g-h is "uff."'
I say, 'I try to speak your words,
I can't prononz zem though,'
"'In time you'll learn, but now you're wrong,
O-u-g-h is "owe."'
'I'll try no more. I sall go mad,
I'll drown me in ze lough!'
"'But ere you drown yourself,' said he,
'O-u-g-h is "ock."'
He taught no more! I held him fast,
And killed him wiz a rough!"
[241] It is interesting to remember that at one period in European
history, French seemed likely to absorb English, and thus to acquire, in
addition to its own motor force, all the motor force which now lies
behind English. When the Normans--a vigorous people of Scandinavian
origin, speaking a Romance tongue, and therefore well fitted to
accomplish a harmonizing task of this kind--occupied both sides of the
English Channel, it seemed probable that they would dominate the speech
of England as well as of France. "At that time," says Méray (_La Vie aux
Temps des Cours d'Amour_, p. 367), who puts forward this view, "the
people of the two coasts of the Channel were closer in customs and in
speech than were for a long time the French on the opposite banks of the
Loire.... The influential part of the English nation and all the people
of its southern regions spoke the _Romance_ of the north of France. In
the Crusades the Knights of the two peoples often mixed, and were
greeted as Franks wherever their adventurous spirit led them. If Edward
III, with the object of envenoming an antagonism which served his own
ends, had not broken this link of language, the two peoples would
perhaps have been united to-day in the same efforts of progress and of
liberty.... Of what a fine instrument of culture and of progress has not
that fatal decree of Edward III deprived civilization!"
[242] I was at one time (_Progressive Review_, April, 1897) inclined to
think that the adoption of both English and French, as joint auxiliary
international languages--the first for writing and the second for
speaking--might solve the problem. I have since recognized that such a
solution, however advantageous it might be for human culture, would
present many difficulties, and is quite impracticable.
[243] I may refer to three able papers which have appeared in recent years
in the _Popular Science Monthly_: Anna Monsch Roberts, "The Problem of
International Speech" (February, 1908); Ivy Kellerman, "The Necessity
for an International Language," (September, 1909); Albert Léon Guérard,
"English as an International Language" (October, 1911). All these
writers reject as impracticable the adoption of either English or French
as the auxiliary international language, and view with more favour the
adoption of an artificial language such as Esperanto.
[244] A.M. Roberts, _op. cit._
[245] It should be added, however, that the auxiliary language need not
be used as a medium for literary art, and it is a mistake, as Pfaundler
points out, to translate poems into such a language.
[246] See _International Language and Science_, 1910, by Couturat,
Jespersen, Lorenz, Ostwald, Pfaundler, and Donnan, five professors
living in five different countries.
[247] The progress of the movement is recorded in its official journal,
_Progreso_, edited by Couturat, and in De Beaufront's journal, _La
Langue Auxiliaire_.
XII
INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIALISM
Social Hygiene in Relation to the Alleged Opposition between
Socialism and Individualism--The Two Parties in Politics--The
Relation of Conservatism and Radicalism to Socialism and
Individualism--The Basis of Socialism--The Basis of
Individualism--The seeming Opposition between Socialism and
Individualism merely a Division of Labour--Both Socialism and
Individualism equally Necessary--Not only Necessary but
Indispensable to each other--The Conflict between the Advocates of
Environment and Heredity--A New Embodiment of the supposed Conflict
between Socialism and Individualism--The Place of Eugenics--Social
Hygiene ultimately one with the Hygiene of the Soul--The Function
of Utopias.
The controversy between Individualism and Socialism, the claim of the
personal unit as against the claim of the collective community, is of
ancient date. Yet it is ever new and constantly presented afresh. It
even seems to become more acute as civilization progresses. Every scheme
of social reform, every powerful manifestation of individual energy,
raise anew a problem that is never out of date.
It is inevitable, indeed, that with the development of social hygiene
during the past hundred years there should also develop a radical
opposition of opinion as to the methods by which such hygiene ought to
be accomplished. There has always been this opposition in the political
sphere; it is natural to find it also in the social sphere. The very
fact that old-fashioned politics are becoming more and more transformed
into questions of social hygiene itself ensures the continuance of such
an opposition.
In politics, and especially in the politics of constitutional countries
of which England is the type, there are normally two parties. There is
the party that holds by tradition, by established order and solidarity,
the maintenance of the ancient hierarchical constitution of society, and
in general distinguishes itself by a preference for the old over the
new. There is, on the other side, the party that insists on progress, on
freedom, on the reasonable demands of the individual, on the adaptation
of the accepted order to changing conditions, and in general
distinguishes itself by a preference for the new over the old. The first
may be called the party of structure, and the second the party of
function. In England we know the adherents of one party as Conservatives
and those of the other party as Liberals or Radicals.
In time, it is true, these normal distinctions between the party of
structure and the party of function tend to become somewhat confused;
and it is precisely the transition of politics into the social sphere
which tends to introduce confusion. With a political system which
proceeds ultimately out of a society with a feudalistic basis, the
normal attitude of political parties is long maintained. The party of
structure, the Conservative party, holds by the ancient feudalistic
ideals which are really, in the large sense, socialistic, though a
socialism based on a foundation of established inequality, and so
altogether unlike the democratic socialism promulgated to-day. The
party of function, the Liberal party, insists on the break-up of this
structural socialism to meet the new needs of progressive civilization.
But when feudalism has been left far behind, and many of the changes
introduced by Liberalism have become part of the social structure, they
fall under the protection of Conservatives who are fighting against new
Liberal innovations. Thus the lines of delimitation tend to become
indistinct.
In the politics of social hygiene there are the same two factors: the
party of structure and the party of function. In their nature and in
their opposition to each other they correspond to the two parties in the
old political field. But they have changed their character and their
names: the party of structure is here Socialism or Collectivism,[248] the
party of function is Individualism.[249] And while the Tory, the
Conservative of early days, was allied to Collectivism, and the Whig,
the Liberal of early days, to Individualism, that correspondence has
ceased to be invariable owing to the confused manner in which the old
political parties have nowadays shifted their ground. We may thus see a
Liberal who is a Collectivist when a Collectivist measure may involve
that innovation to secure adjustment to new needs which is of the
essence of Liberalism, and we may see a Conservative who is an
Individualist when Individualism involves that maintenance of the
existing order which is of the essence of Conservatism. Whether a man is
a Conservative or a Liberal, he may incline either to Socialism or to
Individualism without breaking with his political tradition. It is,
therefore, impossible to import any political animus into the
fundamental antagonism between Individualism and Socialism, which
prevails in the sphere of social hygiene.
We cannot hope to see clearly the grave problems involved by the
fundamental antagonism between Socialism and Individualism unless we
understand what each is founded on and what it is aiming at.
When we seek to inquire how it is that the Socialist ideal exerts so
powerful an attraction on the human mind, and why it is ever seeking new
modes of practical realization, we cannot fail to perceive that it
ultimately proceeds from the primitive need of mutual help, a need which
was felt long before the appearance of humanity.[250] If, however, we keep
strictly to our immediate mammalian traditions it may be said that the
earliest socialist community is the family, with its trinity of father,
mother, and child. The primitive family constitutes a group which is
conditioned by the needs of each member. Each individual is subordinated
to the whole. The infant needs the mother and the mother needs the
infant; they both need the father and the father needs both for the
complete satisfaction of his own activities. Socially and economically
this primitive group is a unit, and if broken up into its individual
parts these would be liable to perish.
However we may multiply our social unit, however we may enlarge and
elaborate it, however we may juggle with the results, we cannot disguise
the essential fact. At the centre of every social agglomeration, however
vast, however small, lies the social unit of the family of which each
individual is by himself either unable to live or unable to reproduce,
unable, that is to say, to gratify the two fundamental needs of hunger
and love.
There are many people who, while willing to admit that the family is, in
a sense, a composite social unit to which each part has need of the
other parts, so that all are mutually bound together, seek to draw a
firm line of distinction between the family and society. Family life,
they declare, is not irreconcilable with individualism; it is merely _un
égoïsme à trois_. It is, however, difficult to see how such a
distinction can be maintained, whether we look at the matter
theoretically or practically. In a small country like Great Britain, for
instance, every Englishman (excluding new immigrants) is related by
blood to every other Englishman, as would become clearer if every man
possessed his pedigree for a thousand years back. When we remember,
further, also, that every nation has been overlaid by invasions, warlike
or peaceful, from neighbouring lands, and has, indeed, been originally
formed in this way since no people has sprung up out of the soil of its
own land, we must further admit that the nations themselves form one
family related by blood.
Our genealogical relation to our fellows is too remote and extensive to
concern us much practically and sentimentally, though it is well that we
should realize it. If we put it aside, we have still to remember that
our actual need of our fellows is not definitely to be distinguished
from the mutual needs of the members of the smallest social unit, the
family.
In practice the individual is helpless. Of all animals, indeed, man is
the most helpless when left to himself. He must be cared for by others
at every moment during his long infancy. He is dependent on the
exertions of others for shelter and clothes, while others are occupied
in preparing his food and conveying it from the ends of the world. Even
if we confine ourselves to the most elementary needs of a moderately
civilized existence, or even if our requirements are only those of an
idiot in an asylum, yet, for every one of us, there are literally
millions of people spending the best of their lives from morning to
night and perhaps receiving but little in return. The very elementary
need of the individual in an urban civilization for pure water to drink
can only be attained by organized social effort. The gigantic aqueducts
constructed by the Romans are early monuments of social activity typical
of all the rest. The primary needs of the individual can only be
supplied by an immense and highly organized social effort. The more
complex civilization becomes, and the more numerous individual needs
become, so much the more elaborate and highly organized becomes the
social response to those needs. The individual is so dependent on
society that he needs not only the active work of others, but even their
mere passive good opinion, and if he loses that he is a failure,
bankrupt, a pauper, a lunatic, a criminal, and the social reaction
against him may suffice to isolate him, even to put him out of life
altogether. So dependent indeed on society is the individual that there
has always been a certain plausibility in the old idea of the Stoics,
countenanced by St. Paul, and so often revived in later days (as by
Schäffle, Lilienfeld, and René Worms), that society is an organism in
which the individuals are merely cells depending for their significance
on the whole to which they belong. Just as the animal is, as Hegel, the
metaphysician, called it, a "nation," and Dareste, the physiologist, a
"city," made up of cells which are individuals having a common ancestor,
so the actual nation, the real city, is an animal made up of individuals
which are cells having a common ancestor, or, as Oken long ago put it,
individuals are the organs of the whole.[251] Man is a social animal in
constant action and reaction with all his fellows of the same group--a
group which becomes ever greater as civilization advances--and socialism
is merely the formal statement of this ultimate social fact.[252]
There is a divinity that hedges certain words. A sacred terror warns the
profane off them as off something that might blast the beholder's sight.
In fact it is so, and even a clear-sighted person may be blinded by such
a word. Of these words none is more typical than the word "socialism."
Not so very long ago a prominent public man, of high intelligence, but
evidently susceptible to the terror-striking influence of words, went to
Glasgow to deliver an address on Social Reform. He warned his hearers
against Socialism, and told them that, though so much talked about, it
had not made one inch of progress; of practical Socialism or
Collectivism there were no signs at all. Yet, as some of his hearers
pointed out, he gave his address in a municipally owned hall,
illuminated by municipal lights, to an audience which had largely
arrived in municipal tramcars travelling through streets owned,
maintained, and guarded by the municipality. This audience was largely
educated in State schools, in which their children nowadays can receive
not only free education and free books, but, if necessary, free food and
free medical inspection and treatment. Moreover, the members of this
same audience thus assured of the non-existence of Socialism, are
entitled to free treatment in the municipal hospital, should an
infective disease overtake them; the municipality provides them freely
with concerts and picture galleries, golf courses and swimming ponds;
and in old age, finally, if duly qualified, they receive a State
pension. Now all these measures are socialistic, and Socialism is
nothing more or less than a complicated web of such measures; the
socialistic State, as some have put it, is simply a great national
co-operative association of which the Government is the board of
managers.
It is said by some who disclaim any tendency to Socialism, that what
they desire is not the State-ownership of the means of production, but
State-regulation. Let the State, in the interests of the community, keep
a firm control over the individualistic exploitation of capital, let it
tax capital as far as may be desirable in the interests of the
community. But beyond this, capital, as well as land, is sacred. The
distinction thus assumed is not, however, valid. The very people who
make this distinction are often enthusiastic advocates of an enlarged
navy and a more powerful army. Yet these can only be provided by
taxation, and every tax in a democratic State is a socialistic measure,
and involves collective ownership of the proceeds, whether they are
applied to making guns or swimming-baths. Every step in the regulation
of industry assumes the rights of society over individualistic
production, and is therefore socialistic. It is a question of less or
more, but except along those two lines, there is no socialism at all to
be reckoned with in the practical affairs of the world. That
revolutionary socialism of the dogmatically systematic school of Karl
Marx which desired to transfer society at a single stroke by taking over
and centralizing all the means of production may now be regarded as a
dream. It never at any time took root in the English-speaking lands,
though it was advocated with unwearying patience by men of such force of
intellect and of character as Mr. Hyndman and William Morris. Even in
Germany, the land of its origin, nearly all its old irreconcilable
leaders are dead, and it is now slowly but steadily losing influence, to
give place to a more modern and practical socialism.
As we are concerned with it to-day and in the future, Socialism is not a
rigid economic theory, nor is it the creed of a narrow sect. In its wide
sense it is a name that covers all the activities--first instinctive,
then organized--which arise out of the fundamental fact that man is a
social animal. In its more precise sense it indicates the various
orderly measures that are taken by groups of individuals--whether States
or municipalities--to provide collectively for the definite needs of the
individuals composing the group. So much for Socialism.
The individualist has a very different story to tell. From the point of
view of Individualism, however elaborate the structure of the society
you erect, it can only, after all, be built up of individuals, and its
whole worth must depend on the quality of those individuals. If they are
not fully developed and finely tempered by high responsibilities and
perpetual struggles, all social effort is fruitless, it will merely
degrade the individual to the helpless position of a parasite. The
individual is born alone; he must die alone; his deepest passions, his
most exquisite tastes, are personal; in this world, or in any other
world, all the activities of society cannot suffice to save his soul.
Thus it is that the individual must bear his own burdens, for it is
only in so doing that the muscles of his body grow strong and that the
energies of his spirit become keen. It is by the qualities of the
individual alone that work is sound and that initiative is possible. All
trade and commerce, every practical affair of life, depend for success
on the personal ability of individuals.[253] It is not only so in the
everyday affairs of life, it is even more so on the highest planes of
intellectual and spiritual life. The supreme great men of the race were
termed by Carlyle its "heroes," by Emerson its "representative men,"
but, equally by the less and by the more democratic term, they are
always individuals standing apart from society, often in violent
opposition to it, though they have always conquered in the end. When any
great person has stood alone against the world it has always been the
world that lost. The strongest man, as Ibsen argued in his _Enemy of the
People_, is the man who stands most alone. "He will be the greatest,"
says Nietzsche in _Beyond Good and Evil_, "who can be the most solitary,
the most concealed, the most divergent." Every great and vitally
organized person is hostile to the rigid and narrow routine of social
conventions, whether established by law or by opinion; they must ever be
broken to suit his vital needs. Therefore the more we multiply these
social routines, the more strands we weave into the social web, the more
closely we draw them, by so much the more we are discouraging the
production of great and vitally organized persons, and by so much the
more we are exposing society to destruction at the hands of such
persons.
Beneath Socialism lies the assertion that society came first and that
individuals are indefinitely apt for education into their place in
society. Socialism has inherited the maxim, which Rousseau, the
uncompromising Individualist, placed at the front of his _Social
Contract_: "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." There is
nothing to be done but to strike off the chains and organize society on
a social basis. Men are not this or that; they are what they have been
made. Make the social conditions right, says the thorough-going
Socialist, and individuals will be all that we could desire them to be.
Not poverty alone, but disease, lunacy, prostitution, criminality are
all the results of bad social and economic conditions. Create the right
environment and you have done all that is necessary. To some extent that
is clearly true. But the individualist insists that there are definite
limits to its truth. Even in the most favourable environment nearly
every ill that the Socialist seeks to remove is found. Inevitably, the
Individualist declares, because we do not spring out of our environment,
but out of our ancestral stocks. Against the stress on environment, the
Individualist lays the stress on the ascertained facts of heredity. It
is the individual that counts, and for good or for ill the individual
brought his fate with him at birth. Ensure the production of sound
individuals, and you may set at naught the environment. You will,
indeed, secure results incomparably better than even the most anxious
care expended on environment alone can ever hope to secure.
Such are the respective attitudes of Socialism and Individualism. So far
as I can see, they are both absolutely right. Nor is it even clear that
they are really opposed; for, as happens in every field, while the
affirmations of each are sound, their denials are unsound. Certainly,
along each line we may be carried to absurdity. The Individualism of Max
Stirner is not far from the ultimate frontier of sanity, and possibly
even on the other side of it;[254] while the Socialism of the Oneida
Community involved a self-subordination which it would be idle to expect
from the majority of men and women. But there is a perfect division of
labour between Socialism and Individualism. We cannot have too much of
either of them. We have only to remember that the field of each is
distinct. No one needs Individualism in his water supply, and no one
needs Socialism in his religion. All human affairs sort themselves out
as coming within the province of Socialism or of Individualism, and each
may be pushed to its furthest extreme.[255]
It so happens, however, that the capacity of the human brain is limited,
and a single brain is not made to hold together the idea of Socialism
and the idea of Individualism. Ordinary people have, it is true, no
practical difficulty whatever in acting concurrently in accordance with
the ideas of Socialism and of Individualism. But it is different with
the men of ideas; they must either be Socialists or Individualists; they
cannot be both. The tendency in one or the other direction is probably
inborn in these men of ideas.
We need not regret this inevitable division of labour. On the contrary,
it is difficult to see how the right result could otherwise be brought
about. People without ideas experience no difficulty in harmonizing the
two tendencies. But if the ideas of Socialism and Individualism tended
to appear in the same brain they would neutralize each other or lead
action into an unprofitable _via media_. The separate initiative and
promulgation of the two tendencies encourages a much more effective
action, and best promotes that final harmony of the two extremes which
the finest human development needs.
There is more to be said. Not only are both alike indispensable, and
both too profoundly rooted in human nature to be abolished or abridged,
but each is indispensable to the other. There can be no Socialism
without Individualism; there can be no Individualism without Socialism.
Only a very fine development of personal character and individual
responsibility can bear up any highly elaborated social organization,
which is why small Socialist communities have only attained success by
enlisting finely selected persons; only a highly organized social
structure can afford scope for the play of individuality. The
enlightened Socialist nowadays often realizes something of the
relationship of Socialism to Individualism, and the Individualist--if he
were not in recent times, for all his excellent qualities, sometimes
lacking in mental flexibility and alertness--would be prepared to admit
his own relationship to Socialism. "The organization of the whole is
dominated by the necessities of cellular life," as Dareste says. That
truth is well recognized by the physiologists since the days of Claude
Bernard. It is absolutely true of the physiology of society. Social
organization is not for the purpose of subordinating the individual to
society; it is as much for the purpose of subordinating society to the
individual.
Between individuals, even the greatest, and society there is perpetual
action and reaction. While the individual powerfully acts on society, he
can only so act in so far as he is himself the instrument and organ of
society. The individual leads society, but only in that direction
whither society wishes to go. Every man of science merely carries
knowledge or invention one further step, a needed and desired step,
beyond the stage reached by his immediate predecessors. Every poet and
artist is only giving expression to the secret feelings and impulses of
his fellows. He has the courage to utter for the first time the intimate
emotion and aspiration which he finds in the depth of his own soul, and
he has the skill to express them in forms of radiant beauty. But all
these secret feelings and desires are in the hearts of other men, who
have not the boldness to tell them nor the ability to embody them
exquisitely. In the life of man, as in nature generally, there is a
perpetual process of exfoliation, as Edward Carpenter calls it, whereby
a latent but striving desire is revealed, and the man of genius is the
stimulus and the incarnation of this exfoliating movement. That is why
every great poet and artist when once his message becomes intelligible,
is acclaimed and adored by the crowd for whom he would only have been an
object of idle wonderment if he had not expressed and glorified
themselves. When the man of genius is too far ahead of his time, he is
rejected, however great his genius may be, because he represents the
individual out of vital relation to his time. A Roger Bacon, for all his
stupendous intellect, is deprived of pen and paper and shut up in a
monastery, because he is undertaking to answer questions which will not
be asked until five centuries after his death. Perhaps the supreme man
of genius is he who, like Virgil, Leonardo, or Shakespeare, has a
message for his own time and a message for all times, a message which is
for ever renewed for every new generation.
The need for insisting on the intimate relations between Socialism and
Individualism has become the more urgent to-day because we are reaching
a stage of civilization in which each tendency is inevitably so pushed
to its full development that a clash is only prevented by the
realization that here we have truly a harmony. Sometimes a matter that
belongs to one sphere is so closely intertwined with a matter that
belongs to the other that it is a very difficult problem how to hold
them separate and allow each its due value.[256]
At times, indeed, it is really very difficult to determine to which
sphere a particular kind of human activity belongs. This is notably the
case as regards education. "Render unto Cæsar the things that be
Cæsar's, and unto God the things that be God's." But is education among
the things that belong to Cæsar, to social organization, or among the
things that belong to God, to the province of the individual's soul?
There is much to be said on both sides. Of late the Socialist tendency
prevails here, and there is a disposition to standardize rigidly an
education so superficial, so platitudinous, so uniform, so
unprofitable--so fatally oblivious of what even the word _education_
means[257]--that some day, perhaps, the revolted Individualist spirit will
arise in irresistible might to sweep away the whole worthless structure
from top to bottom, with even such possibilities of good as it may
conceal. The educationalists of to-day may do well to remember that it
is wise to be generous to your enemies even in the interests of your own
preservation.
In every age the question of Individualism and Socialism takes on a
different form. In our own age it has become acute under the form of a
conflict between the advocates of good heredity and the advocates of
good environment. On the one hand there is the desire to breed the
individual to a high degree of efficiency by eugenic selection,
favouring good stocks and making the procreation of bad stocks more
difficult. On the other hand there is the effort so to organize the
environment by collectivist methods that life for all may become easy
and wholesome. As usual, those who insist on the importance of good
environment are inclined to consider that the question of heredity may
be left to itself, and those who insist on the importance of good
heredity are indifferent to environment. As usual, also, there is a real
underlying harmony of those two demands. There is, however, here more
than this. In this most modern of their embodiments, Socialism and
Individualism are not merely harmonious, each is the key to the other,
which remains unattainable without it. However carefully we improve our
breed, however anxiously we guard the entrance to life, our labour will
be in vain if we neglect to adapt the environment to the fine race we
are breeding. The best individuals are not the toughest, any more than
the highest species are the toughest, but rather, indeed, the reverse,
and no creature needs so much and so prolonged an environing care as
man, to ensure his survival. On the other hand, an elaborate attention
to the environment, combined with a reckless inattention to the quality
of the individuals born to live in that environment can only lead to an
overburdened social organization which will speedily fall by its own
weight.
During the past century the Socialists of the school for bettering the
environment have for the most part had the game in their own hands. They
founded themselves on the very reasonable basis of sympathy, a basis
which the eighteenth-century moralists had prepared, which Schopenhauer
had formulated, which George Eliot had passionately preached, which had
around its operations the immense prestige of the gospel of Jesus. The
environmental Socialists--always quite reasonably--set themselves to
improve the conditions of labour; they provided local relief for the
poor; they built hospitals for the free treatment of the sick. They are
proceeding to feed school children, to segregate and protect the
feeble-minded, to insure the unemployed, to give State pensions to the
aged, and they are even asked to guarantee work for all. Now these
things, and the likes of them, are not only in accordance with natural
human impulses, but for the most part they are reasonable, and in
protecting the weak the strong are, in a certain sense, protecting
themselves. No one nowadays wants the hungry to hunger or the suffering
to suffer. Indeed, in that sense, there never has been any
_laissez-faire_ school.[258]
But as the movement of environmental Socialism realizes itself, it
becomes increasingly clear that it is itself multiplying the work which
it sets itself to do. In enabling the weak, the incompetent, and the
defective to live and to live comfortably, it makes it easier for those
on the borderland of these classes to fall into them, and it furnishes
the conditions which enable them to propagate their like, and to do
this, moreover, without that prudent limitation which is now becoming
universal in all classes above those of the weak, the incompetent, and
the defective. Thus unchecked environmental Socialism, obeying natural
impulses and seeking legitimate ends, would be drawn into courses at the
end of which only social enfeeblement, perhaps even dissolution, could
be seen.
The key to the situation, it is now beginning to be more and more widely
felt, is to be found in the counterbalancing tendency of Individualism,
and the eugenic guardianship of the race. Not, rightly understood, as a
method of arresting environmental Socialism, nor even as a counterblast
to its gospel of sympathy. Nietzsche, indeed, has made a famous assault
on sympathy, as he has on conventional morality generally, but his
"immoralism" in general and his "hardness" in particular are but new and
finer manifestations of those faded virtues he was really seeking to
revive. The superficially sympathetic man flings a coin to the beggar;
the more deeply sympathetic man builds an almshouse for him so that he
need no longer beg; but perhaps the most radically sympathetic of all is
the man who arranges that the beggar shall not be born.
So it is that the question of breed, the production of fine individuals,
the elevation of the ideal of quality in human production over that of
mere quantity, begins to be seen, not merely as a noble ideal in itself,
but as the only method by which Socialism can be enabled to continue on
its present path. If the entry into life is conceded more freely to the
weak, the incompetent, and the defective than to the strong, the
efficient, and the sane, then a Sisyphean task is imposed on society;
for every burden lifted two more burdens appear. But as individual
responsibility becomes developed, as we approach the time to which
Galton looked forward, when the eugenic care for the race may become a
religion, then social control over the facts of life becomes possible.
Through the slow growth of knowledge concerning hereditary conditions,
by voluntary self-restraint, by the final disappearance of the lingering
prejudice against the control of procreation, by sterilization in
special cases, by methods of pressure which need not amount to actual
compulsion,[259] it will be possible to attain an increasingly firm grip
on the evil elements of heredity. Not until such measures as these,
under the controlling influence of a sense of personal responsibility
extending to every member of the community, have long been put into
practice, can we hope to see man on the earth risen to his full stature,
healthy in body, noble in spirit, beautiful in both alike, moving
spaciously and harmoniously among his fellows in the great world of
Nature, to which he is so subtly adapted because he has himself sprung
out of it and is its most exquisite flower. At this final point social
hygiene becomes one with the hygiene of the soul.[260]
Poets and prophets, from Jesus and Paul to Novalis and Whitman, have
seen the divine possibilities of Man. There is no temple in the world,
they seem to say, so great as the human body; he comes in contact with
Heaven, they declare, who touches a human person. But these human
things, made to be gods, have spawned like frogs over all the earth.
Everywhere they have beslimed its purity and befouled its beauty,
darkening the very sunshine. Heaped upon one another in evil masses,
preying upon one another as no other creature has ever preyed upon its
kind, they have become a festering heap which all the oceans in vain
lave with their antiseptic waters, and all the winds of heaven cannot
purify. It is only in the unextinguished spark of reason within him that
salvation for man may ever be found, in the realization that he is his
own star, and carries in his hands his own fate. The impulses of
Individualism and of Socialism alike prompt us to gain self-control and
to learn the vast extent of our responsibility. The whole of humanity is
working for each of us; each of us must live worthy of that great
responsibility to humanity. By how fine a flash of insight Jesus
declared that few could enter the Kingdom of Heaven! Not until the earth
is purified of untold millions of its population will it ever become the
Heaven of old dreamers, in which the elect walk spaciously and nobly,
loving one another. Only in such spacious and pure air is it possible
for the individual to perfect himself, as a rose becomes perfect,
according to Dante's beautiful simile,[261] in order that he may spread
abroad for others the fragrance that has been generated within him. If
one thinks of it, that seems a truism, yet, even in this twentieth
century, how few, how very few, there are who know it!
This is why we cannot have too much Individualism, we cannot have too
much Socialism. They play into each other's hands. To strengthen one is
to give force to the other. The greater the vigour of both, the more
vitally a society is progressing. "I can no more call myself an
Individualist or a Socialist," said Henry George, "than one who
considers the forces by which the planets are held to their orbits could
call himself a centrifugalist or a centripetalist." To attain a society
in which Individualism and Socialism are each carried to its extreme
point would be to attain to the society that lived in the Abbey of
Thelema, in the City of the Sun, in Utopia, in the land of Zarathustra,
in the Garden of Eden, in the Kingdom of Heaven. It is a kingdom, no
doubt, that is, as Diderot expressed it, "diablement idéal." But to-day
we hold in our hands more certainly than ever before the clues that were
imperfectly foreshadowed by Plato, and what our fathers sought
ignorantly we may attempt by methods according to knowledge. No Utopia
was ever realized; and the ideal is a mirage that must ever elude us or
it would cease to be ideal. Yet all our progress, if progress there be,
can only lie in setting our faces towards that goal to which Utopias and
ideals point.
FOOTNOTES:
[248] In the narrow sense Socialism is identical with the definite
economic doctrine of the Collectivistic organization of the productive
and distributive work of society. It also possesses, as Bosanquet
remarks (in an essay on "Individualism and Socialism," in _The
Civilization of Christendom_), "a deeper meaning as a name for a human
tendency that is operative throughout history." Every Collectivist is a
Socialist, but not every Socialist would admit that he is a
Collectivist. "Moral Socialism," however, though not identical with
"Economic Socialism," tends to involve it.
[249] The term "Individualism," like the term "Socialism," is used in
varying senses, and is not, therefore, satisfactory to everyone. Thus
E.F.B. Fell (_The Foundations of Liberty_, 1908), regarding
"Individualism," as a merely negative term, prefers the term
"Personalism," to denote a more positive ideal. There is, however, by no
means as any necessity to consider "Individualism," a more negative term
than "Socialism."
[250] The inspiring appeal of Socialism to ardent minds is no doubt
ethical. "The ethics of Socialism," says Kirkup, "are closely akin to
the ethics of Christianity, if not identical with them." That, perhaps,
is why Socialism is so attractive to some minds, so repugnant to others.
[251] This idea was elaborated by Eimer in an appendix to his _Organic
Evolution_ on the idea of the individual in the animal kingdom.
[252] The term "socialism" is said to date from about the year 1835.
Leroux claimed that he invented it, in opposition to the term
"individualism," but at that period it had become so necessary and so
obvious a term that it is difficult to say positively by whom it was
first used.
[253] An important point which the Individualist may fairly bring forward
in this connection is the tendency of Socialism to repress the energy of
the best worker among its officials at the expense of the public. Alike
in government offices at Whitehall and in municipal offices in the town
halls there is a certain proportion of workers who find pleasure in
putting forth their best energies at high pressure. But the majority
take care that work shall be carried on at low pressure, and that the
output shall not exceed a certain understood minimum. They ensure this
by making things uncomfortable for the workers who exceed that minimum.
The gravity of this evil is scarcely yet realized. It could probably be
counteracted by so organizing promotion that the higher posts really
went to the officials distinguished by the quantity and the quality of
their work. Pensions should also be affected by the same consideration.
In any case, the evil is serious, and is becoming more so since the
number of public officials is constantly increasing. The Council of the
Law Society found some years ago that the cost of civil administration
in England had increased between the years 1894 and 1904 from 19
millions to 25 millions, and, excluding the Revenue Departments, it is
now said to have gone up to 42 millions. It is an evil that will have to
be dealt with sooner or later.
[254] Max Stirner wrote his work, _Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum_ (_The
Ego and His Own_, in the English translation of Byington), in 1845. His
life has been written by John Henry Mackay (_Max Stirner: Sein Leben und
Sein Werk_), and an interesting study of Max Stirner (whose real name
was Schmidt) will be found in James Huneker's _Egoists_.
[255] In the introduction to my earliest book, _The New Spirit_ (1889), I
set forth this position, from which I have never departed: "While we are
socializing all those things of which all have equal common need, we are
more and more tending to leave to the individual the control of those
things which in our complex civilization constitute individuality. We
socialize what we call our physical life in order that we may attain
greater freedom for what we call our spiritual life." No doubt such a
point of view was implicit in Ruskin and other previous writers, just as
it has subsequently been set forth by Ellen Key and others, while from
the economic side it has been well formulated by Mr. J.A. Hobson in his
_Evolution of Capital_: "The _very raison d'être_ of increased social
cohesiveness is to economize and enrich the individual life, and to
enable the play of individual energy to assume higher forms out of which
more individual satisfaction may accrue." "Socialism will be of value,"
thought Oscar Wilde in his _Soul of Man_, "simply because it will lead
to Individualism." "Socialism denies economic Individualism for any,"
says Karl Nötzel ("Zur Ethischen Begrundung des Sozialismus,"
_Sozialistische Monatshefte_, 1910, Heft 23), "in order to make moral
intellectual Individualism possible for all." And as it has been seen
that Socialism leads to Individualism, so it has also been seen that
Individualism, even on the ethical plane, leads to Socialism. "You must
let the individual make his will a reality in the conduct of his life,"
Bosanquet remarks in an essay already quoted, "in order that it may be
possible for him consciously to entertain the social purpose as a
constituent of his will. Without these conditions there is no social
organism and no moral Socialism.... Each unit of the social organism has
to embody his relations with the whole in his own particular work and
will; and in order to do this the individual must have a strength and
depth in himself proportional to and consisting of the relations which
he has to embody." Grant Allen long since clearly set forth the harmony
between Individualism and Socialism in an article published in the
_Contemporary Review_ in 1879.
[256] An instructive illustration is furnished by the question of the
relation of the sexes, and elsewhere (_Studies in the Psychology of
Sex_, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society") I have sought to show that
we must distinguish between marriage, which is directly the affair of
the individuals primarily concerned, and procreation, which is mainly
the concern of society.
[257] See, for instance, the opinion of the former Chief Inspector of
Elementary Schools in England, Mr. Edmond Holmes, _What Is and What
Might Be_ (1911). He points out that true education must be
"self-realization," and that the present system of "education" is
entirely opposed to self-realization. Sir John Gorst, again, has
repeatedly attacked the errors of the English State system of
education.
[258] The phrase _Laissez faire_ is sometimes used as though it were the
watchword of a party which graciously accorded a free hand to the Devil
to do his worst. As a matter of fact, it was simply a phrase adopted by
the French economists of the eighteenth century to summarize the
conclusion of their arguments against the antiquated restrictions which
were then stifling the trade and commerce of France (see G. Weuleresse,
_Le Mouvement Physiocratique en France_, 1910, Vol. II, p. 17). Properly
understood, it is not a maxim which any party need be ashamed to own.
[259] I would again repeat that I do not regard legislation as a channel
of true eugenic reform. As Bateson well says (_op. cit._ p. 15); "It is
not the tyrannical and capricious interference of a half-informed
majority which can safely mould or purify a population, but rather that
simplification of instinct for which we ever hope, which fuller
knowledge alone can make possible." Even the subsidising of
unexceptionable parents, as the same writer remarks, cannot be viewed
with enthusiasm. "If we picture to ourselves the kind of persons who
would infallibly be chosen as examples of 'civic worth' the prospect is
not very attractive."
[260] "Aristotle, herein the organ and exponent of the Greek national
mind," remarks Gomperz, "understood by the hygiene of the soul the
avoidance of all extremes, the equilibrium of the powers, the harmonious
development of aptitudes, none of which is allowed to starve or paralyse
the others." Gomperz points out that this individual morality
corresponded to the characteristics of the Greek national religion--its
inclusiveness and spaciousness, its freedom and serenity, its
ennoblement alike of energetic action and passive enjoyment (Gomperz,
_Greek Thinkers_, Eng. Trans., Vol. III, p. 13).
[261] _Convito_, IV, 27.
THE END
INDEX
(_Names of Authors quoted are italicized._)
Abortion, facultative, 99
Age of consent, 288 _et seq._
Aggeneration, 24
Alcohol, legislative control of, 277 _et seq._, 295 _et seq._
Alcoholism, 33, 41
_Allen, Grant_, 394
_Allen, W.H._, 11
Ancestry, the study of, 2
_Angell, Norman_, 321
_Anthony, Susan_, 111
Antimachus of Colophon, 117
Anti-militarism, 328
_Aristotle_, 403
_Ashby_, 33
_Asnurof_, 283
_Aubry_, 42
_Augustine_, St., 5
Australia, birth-rate in, 146 _et seq._, 162;
moral legislation in, 291
_Azoulay_, 188
Bachofen, 91
_Baines, Sir J.A._, 153
_Barnes, Earl_, 223
_Basedow_, 244
_Bateson_, 27, 194, 402
Beatrice, Dante's, 122
Beaufront, L. de, 372, 373
Bebel, 71, 88
_Becker, R._, 118
_Belbèze_, 211
_Benecke, E.F.M._, 117
Bergsonian philosophy, 31
_Bertillon, G._, 63
_Bertillon, J._, 278
_Beveridge_, 171
Bible in religious education, 230, 240
_Billroth_, 353
_Bingham_, 274
Birth-rate, in France, 17, 136, 188;
in England, 17, 137;
in Germany, 17, 138;
in Russia, 25;
in United States, 141;
in Canada, 144;
in Australasia, 146, 162;
in Japan, 155;
in China, 156;
among savages, 167;
significance of a falling, 134 _et seq._;
in relation to death-rate, 7, 150
_Blease, W. Lyon_, 70
_Bloch, Iwan_, 93
_Boccaccio_, 119, 123
_Bodey_, 43, 201
_Böhmert_, 138
_Bonhoeffer_, 38
_Booth, C._, 177, 184
_Bosanquet_, 18, 383, 394
_Bouché-Leclercq_, 306
_Branthwaite_, 41
_Braun, Lily_, 139
_Brinton_, 351
Budin, 8
Bund für Mutterschutz, 96
_Burckhardt_, 123
_Burnham_, 221
_Bushee, F._, 11, 171
_Byington_, 393
Camp, Maxime du, 50
Campanella, 27
Campbell, Harry, 179
Canada, birth-rate in, 144 _et seq._;
sexual hygiene in, 253
_Cantlie_, 179
_Carpenter, Edward_, 397
_Casper_, 91
Certificates, eugenic, 30, 44, 202
_Chadwick, Sir E._, 4, 184
_Chamfort_, 256
Chastity of German women, 88
_Cheetham_, 235
Chicago Vice Commission, 277, 295, 300
Child, psychology of, 218
Children, religious education of, 217
China, birth-rate in, 156
Christianity in relation to romantic love, 117
Chivalrous attitude towards women, 124
Civilization, what it consists in, 18
_Clayton_, 180
_Cobbe, F.P._, 50
Co-education, 58
_Coghlan, T.A._, 147, 161, 165, 166
Coinage, international, 378
Concubinage, legalized, 104
_Condorcet_, 50, 67
Confirmation, rite of, 236
Consent, age of, 288 _et seq._
Courts of Love, 119
_Couturat_, 350, 374
_Creed, J.M._, 291
Criminality and feeble-mindedness, 38
Crucé, Emeric, 315
_Dante_, 122, 132
_Dareste_, 387, 396
_Davenport_, 35, 36, 44, 198
Death-rate in relation to birth-rate, 7, 150
Degenerate families, 41 _et seq._
Degeneration of race, alleged, 19 _et seq._, 37
_De Quincey_, 219
Descartes, 349
_Dickens_, 129
_Dill, Sir S._, 305
Disinfection, origin of, 5
Divorce, 62, 109
_Donkin, Sir H.B._, 39
_Donnan_, 374
Drunkenness, decrease of, 18
Dubois, P., 315
_Dugdale_, 42
_Dumont, Arsène_, 157, 160, 171
Economic aspect of woman's movement, 52, 63 _et seq._
Education, 6, 47, 57, 71, 201, 217 _et seq._, 398
_Ehrenfels_, 25
_Eichholz_, 36
_Eimer_, 387
_Ellis, Havelock_, 15, 31, 40, 44, 49, 88, 100, 108,
118, 130, 154, 161, 179, 186, 204, 206, 207, 220, 244,
259, 369, 394
Enfantin, Prosper, 104
_Engelmann_, 142, 160, 165
English, characteristics of the, 2;
attitude towards immorality, 270;
language for international purposes, 355 _et seq._
Esperanto, 372
_Espinas_, 60
Eugenics, 12, 26 _et seq._, 107, 195 _et seq._, 399 _et seq._
Euthenics, 12
_Ewart, R.J._, 26, 172
Factory legislation, 5
_Fahlbeck_, 22
Fairy tales in education, 239
Family, limitation of, 16, 26
Family in relation to degeneracy, 41;
size of, 35
Feeble-minded, problem of the, 31 _et seq._
_Fell, E.F.B._, 383
Ferrer, 318
Fertility in relation to prosperity, 169 _et seq._
_Fiedler_, 229
_Finlay-Johnson, H._, 227, 242
_Firenzuola_, 123
"Fit," the term, 44
_Flux_, 138
_Forel_, 93
France, birth-rate in, 17, 136, 188;
women and love in, 119;
legal attitude towards immorality in, 265;
regulation of alcohol in, 278
_Franklin, B._, 142, 327
_Fraser, Mrs._, 115
French language for international purposes, 364 _et seq._
Frenssen, 95
_Freud_, S., 92
_Fuld, E.F._, 274, 276
_Fürch, Henriette_, 252
_Galton, Sir F._, 28, 29, 44, 45, 107, 195, 197, 198, 200, 203, 208, 402
_Gaultier, J. de_, 342
_Gautier, Léon_, 119
_Gavin, H._, 184
_Gayley, Julia_, 420
Germany, sex questions in, 87 _et seq._;
illegitimacy in, 97;
sexual hygiene in, 94;
legal attitude towards immorality in, 265, 301
_Giddings_, 46
_Godden_, 35, 198
_Godwin, W._, 309
_Goethe_, 128, 131
_Goldscheid_, 167, 173
_Gomperz_, 403
_Goncourt_, 120
Gouges, Olympe de, 68
_Gourmont, Remy de_, 122, 299, 317
_Gournay, Marie de_, 110
_Grabowsky_, 263
_Grasset_, 209
_Grünspan_, 97
_Guérard_, 325, 346, 369
_Guthrie, L._, 239
_Haddon, A.C._, 234, 245
_Hagen_, 262
_Hale, Horatio_, 351
_Hales, W.W._, 260
_Hall, G. Stanley_, 220, 224, 232, 233, 303
_Hamburger, C._, 151
_Hamill, Henry_, 213
_Hausmeister, P._, 302
_Hayllar, F._, 233
Health, nationalization of, 15
Health visitors, 7
_Hearn, Lafcadio_, 191
_Henry, W.O._, 252
Heredity of feeble-mindedness, 34;
as the hope of the race, 44;
study of, 198
_Heron_, 19, 166
_Hervé_, 329
_Hiller_, 263, 267
_Hinton, James_, 133
_Hirschfeld, Magnus_, 92, 286
_Hobbes_, 313
Holland, moral legislation in, 291
_Holmes, Edmond_, 227, 228
Homosexuality and the law, 283, 286
_Hookey, N.A._, 174
_Hughes, R.E._, 242
_Humboldt, W. von_, 61, 106
_Huneker_, 393
Hungary, birth-rate and death-rate in, 169
_Hutchinson, Woods_, 186
Hygiene, in medieval and modern times, 5;
of sex, 244 _et seq._
Idiocy, 32 _et seq._
Ido, 373
Illegitimacy, and feeble-mindedness, 37;
in Germany, 97
Imbecility, 32 _et seq._
Individualism, 3, 381 _et seq._
Industrialism, modern, 2
Inebriety and feeble-mindedness, 41
Infant consultations, 8
Infantile mortality, 7, 13, 25, 138, 150 _et seq._
Initiation of youth, 234
Insurance, national, 15
International language of the future, 349 _et seq._
_James, E.C._, 123
James, William, 195
Japan, romantic love in, 115;
birth-rate and death-rate in, 155;
changed conditions in, 191, 322
_Jenks, E._, 312, 316
_Johannsen_, 152
_Johnson, Roswell_, 207
_Jordan, D.S._, 324
_Jörger_, 42
Jukes family, 41
_Kaan_, 91
_Kellerman, Ivy_, 369
_Key, Ellen_, 100 _et seq._, 130, 229, 394
_Kirkup_, 384
_Krafft-Ebing_, 92
_Krauss, F.S._, 92
_Kuczynski_, 142
Labour movement and war, 329
_La Chapelle, E.P._, 145
_Lacour, L._, 68
_Lagorgette_, 315
Laissez-faire, the maxim of, 3, 400
_Lancaster_, 231
Language, international, 349 _et seq._
Latin as an international language, 354
_Lavelege, E. de_, 321
Law, in relation to eugenics, 30, 45;
to morals, 48;
the sphere of, 312
_Lea_, 88
_Leau_, 350
_Leibnitz_, 350
_Levy, Miriam_, 221
_Lewis, C.J. and J.N._, 165
Lichtenstein, Ulrich von, 118
Life-history albums, 199, 212 _et seq._
_Lischnewska, Maria_, 248
_Lobsien_, 226
_Loomis, C.B._, 361
_Lorenz_, 21, 373
Love, and the woman's question, 59, 101, 113 _et seq._;
and eugenics, 203 _et seq._
Luther, 94, 228, 306
Mackay, J.H., 393
_Macnamara, N.C._, 179
_Macquart_, 188
Maine, prohibition in, 279
_Mannhardt_, 204
_Manouvrier_, 86
_Marcuse, Max_, 94
Marriage, certificates for, 30, 44, 45, 209;
economics and, 61;
natural selection and, 204;
State regulation of, 61 _et seq._;
the ideal of, 101;
in classic times, 114
Marriage-rate, 139, 164, 173
_Matignon_, 156
Matriarchal theory, 49
_Maurice, Sir F._, 180
_McLean_, 161
_Meisel-Hess, Grete_, 109, 130
_Méray_, 119, 365
_Mercier_, C., 20
Meredith, George, 129
Miele, 9
_Miers_, 354
Milk Depôts, 8
_Mill_, J.S., 52, 71
_Moll_, 92, 93, 246
_Montaigne_, 115
_Montesquieu_, 37
_Moore, B._, 15, 185
Morals in relation to law, 48, 258 _et seq._
More, Sir T., 29
_Morgan, L._, 66
_Morse, J._, 224
Mortality of infants, 7, 13, 25, 138, 150 _et seq._
Motherhood in relation to eugenics, 46
Mothers, schools for, 9
_Mougins-Roquefort_, 312
Municipal authorities to instruct in limitation of offspring, duty of, 26
_Muralt_, 2
Mysteries, Pagan and Christian, 235
_Näcke_, 186
Napoleon, 69, 265
_Nars, L._, 69
National Insurance, 15
Nationalization of health, 15
Natural selection and social reform, 13
_Nearing, Scott_, 194
Neo-Malthusianism, 16, 26, 102, 159 _et seq._
_Nevinson, H.W._, 330
_Newsholme_, 7, 19, 137, 166, 172
New Zealand, birth-rate in, 148
_Nietzsche_, 190, 309, 334, 392
_Niphus_, 123
Norway, infantile mortality in, 14
_Nötzel_, R., 394
_Novikov_, 324, 330, 342
Noys, H., 29
_Nyström_, 26
Obscenity, 255, 304
Oneida, 29
Ovid, 114, 132
Owen, Robert, 51
Pankhurst, Mrs., 85
_Partridge, G.L._, 219
_Paul, Eden_, 208
_Pearson, Karl_, 198
_Penn, W._, 341
_Perrycoste, F.H._, 212
_Peters, J.P._, 293
_Pfaundler_, 371
Pinard, J., 252
_Pinloche_, 244
_Plate_, 185
_Ploetz_, 210
_Ploss_, 167, 176
Police systems, 274
Post Office, inquisition at the, 276
Prohibition of alcohol in Maine, 279
Prosperity in relation to fertility, 169 _et seq._
Prostitution, and feeble-mindedness, 38;
and sexual selection, 60;
varying legal attitude towards, 285, 296
Puberty, psychic influence of, 231 _et seq._
Puericulture, 7
Quakers, 270
Quarantine, origin of, 5
Race, alleged degeneration of, 19 _et seq._, 37
Raines Law hotels, 293 _et seq._
_Ramsay, Sir W.M._, 305
_Ranke, Karl_, 169
_Raschke, Marie_, 99
Reform, Social hygiene as distinct from sexual, 1;
four stages of social, 4 _et seq._
_Reibmayr_, 22
Religion, and eugenics, 208;
and the child, 217 _et seq._
Reproduction, control of, 17
_Richards, Ellen_, 12
_Richardson, Sir B.W._, 65
_Robert, P._, 340
_Roberts, A.M._, 369, 370
Roman Catholics and Neo-Malthusianism, 161
Roseville, 173
_Ross, E.A._, 156
_Rousseau_, 229
_Rubin_, 153, 166
_Ruediger_, 232
Rural life, influence of, 177 _et seq._
_Russell, Mrs. B._, 9
Russia, infantile mortality in, 14, 154, 168;
moral legislation in, 282
_Ryle, R.J._, 33
Sacraments, origin of Christian, 235
Saint-Pierre, Abbé de, 339
Saint-Simon, 51, 104
St. Valentine and eugenics, 203
Sand, George, 50, 105
Sanitation as an element of social reform, 4
_Saussure, R. de_, 380
_Sayer, E._, 35
_Schallmayer_, 200
_Schiff, M._, 110
Schleyer, 352
_Schooling, J.H._, 174
Schools for mothers, 9
_Schrader, O._, 88
_Schreiner, Olive_, 130, 330
_Schroeder, T._, 255, 304
Science and social reform, 11
_Sellers, E._, 266, 301
Sex questions in Germany, 87 _et seq._
Sexual hygiene, 244 _et seq._, 309
Sexual selection, 59, 203 _et seq._
Shaftesbury, Earl of, 6
_Sherwell, A._, 280
_Shrank, J._, 285
_Siégler-Pascal_, 339
_Sitwell, Sir G._, 327
_Smith, Sir T._, 120
_Smith, T.P._, 180
Social reform as distinct from social hygiene, 1;
its four stages, 4 _et seq._
Socialism, 18, 208, 381 _et seq._
Society of the future, 55
_Sollier_, 354
_Solmi_, 28
_Sombart_, 138
Spain, legalized concubinage in, 104;
women in, 129
Spanish as an international language, 353
_Stanton, E.C._, 85
_Starbuck_, 232
_Steinmetz_, 312, 331
_Steele_, 27
Sterilization, 30, 44, 46
Sterility and the birth-rate, 164
_Stevenson_, 19
_Stewart, A._, 237
_Stewart, R.S._, 182
_Stirner, Max_, 393
Stirpiculture, 29
_Stöcker, H._, 96
_Streitberg, Countess von_, 99
Suffrage, woman's, 50, 57, 71 _et seq._
Sully, 315, 340
Sun, City of the, 27
_Sutherland, A._, 312
_Sykes_, 9
Syndicalism, 329
Syphilis, 32
_Taine_, 128, 313
_Takano_, 155
_Tarde_, 132, 307
_Thompson, W._, 51
_Toulouse_, 45, 186
Tramps and feeble-mindedness, 41
_Tredgold_, 34
United States, birth-rate in, 140 _et seq._;
sexual hygiene in, 254;
attitude towards immorality in, 273 _et seq._
Urban life, influence of, 177 _et seq._
Vasectomy, 31
Venereal disease and sexual hygiene, 254
_Vesnitch_, 315
Vineland, 34
Volapük, 352
_Wagenen, W.F. van_, 378
War against war, 311 _et seq._
Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 76
_Weale, B.L. Putnam_, 157
_Weatherby_, 157
_Webb, Sidney_, 156, 163
_Weeks_, 35, 36
_Weinberg, S._, 99
_Wentworth, S._, 173
_Westergaard_, 166
_Westermarck_, 559
_Weuleresse_, 400
Wheeler, Mrs., 52
White slave trade, 288
_Whetham, W.C.D. and Mrs._, 199
_Whitman, Walt_, 66, 403
_Wilcox, W.F._, 141
_Wilde, O._, 394
_Wilhelm, C._, 266
_Wollstonecraft, Mary_, 50, 69, 70, 111
Woman, and eugenics, 46;
movement, 49 _et seq._;
economics, 63 _et seq._;
eighteenth century, 69, 128;
and the suffrage, 50, 57, 71 _et seq._;
of the Italian Renaissance, 123;
in Spanish literature, 129;
and war, 330
_Yule, G. Udny_, 139, 174
Zamenhof, 372
Zero family, 42
_Ziller_, 240
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH
* * * * *
Transcriber's notes:
With the following exceptions spelling and punctuation of the
original text have been maintained:
1. Obvious typographical errors and punctuation inconsistencies.
2. Chapter V, Par 16 "high death-rate" has been changed to
"high birth-rate".
3. Chapter VII Par 16 "precocious sexual" has been changed to "precocious
scriptural".
4. Ligatured words "mytho-poeic", "OEuvres", and "boef" have been left
unligatured.
5. Italicized words have been surrounded with underline "_".
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